I’m unsure about this poem. The title. The metaphors. The lyricism. The clarity.

Here’s the background: I am tearing down a deck that I built onto, at that time, the new addition we added to the house.

I designed the deck with help from my cousin, a brilliant interior designer.

I modeled it in 3D. I bought all of the wood and had it delivered from a lumberyard I never used again.

They dropped the wood off at the bottom of our driveway, which is a steep hill, on top of the hill I needed to climb to the area where the deck was.

So I carried the wood up the hill, until my neighbor George saw me at work and he said, “Let’s try something else.”

He got his small trailer and we loaded the wood on top, lengthwise. I’m sure it was well over a ton. Some of the pressure treated boards were 12 x 20’s, themselves probably over 80 pounds still wet from the treatment.

And then I spent several weeks working on the project as I could. Pouring concrete into four foot holes that I dug. Learning so many new skills.

And when it was done I was incredibly proud. It was a beautiful deck with built in seating, two levels, landscaped stairs on both sides, and about six hundred square feet.

It was big.

I had the permits needed. It was a solid rock, at the time, the “monolith” that I mention here.

But some sixteen years later the boards began to show signs of rot. I cut them out and replaced them. I treated them with expensive Benjamin Moore deck stain and sealer.

But that sealer started peeling off the next summer, in huge areas, but not all.

That was a sign of something, I think, not just poor application or poor materials.

It was the sign of the natural order of things.

The lifespan of pressure treated wood varies depending on the source of the estimate, anywhere from 15 to 50 years I saw in one post, but 15 to 20 years seems typical. If you get the estimate comparing pt to composite (pvc, plastic) the lifespan drops to ten.

I think they want to increase the lifespan estimate.

So mine lasted eighteen years in the end. Acceptable I’d say.

We considered replacing the surface, but that expense was just crazy high, and we opted to remove the deck.

We have another one that we use all the time. This first deck was too far from the kitchen/dining room, the area of the house where we spend the most time.

That one is about 500 sf. Also very big. Also with built in seating, three levels, and a wooden bar. That’s where the grill is. That’s our goto deck.

So this poem is about the death of that first deck. I have sadness tearing it apart, cutting up the deck boards ultimately with a chainsaw to speed up the process and using a deck removal bar that is pretty amazing.

I’m salvaging the lumber that is still good to use with the shed/writers nook I’m building now, trying to have that structure made with on-hand supplies.

I won’t quite make it, I think, because of the roof. But I’ll be close.

And as for this poem. I wrote it a few days ago and seeing it now the metaphors feel cliche–saying that summer has memories which are the fall leaves, that summer can wave goodbye. That wonder is a bird.

I like though that the poem has a theme of memory loss within–that memories can be discarded, that they will wear away. If you think of the deck itself as memory, you can see that the idea of rot and decay, leaving summer for autumn, wonder having a final visit before flying away–that’s there.

Gravity is both an inescapable force here but is also hinting at the word “grave”, that the deck has died. That our memories will die eventually as well.

Within the theme of my memory poems, though, I have a running theme of the “gravity of love”, so that is suggested here as well.

So the poem feels ready to post. I’ll come back to it and think about it again. Assuming I ever finish the poetry book I’m working on I’ll consider including it.

If I remember to. Only if I remember.

diy

There are things I must do 
on this metaphoric autumn day 
but so many more I must push away

like raking up the scatter 
of summer’s memories on the lawn
or yawning while the summer

waves goodbye behind the fog
or joining our dogs to chase deer
into and through the woods again

or anything to avoid destroying 
this rotting wooden monument
that seemed, once, a monolith 

so, instead, I sip mystery from a steel 
mug while wonder tilts its wings 
and glides the sky with gravity

to sit on these bones of trees
that were the deck I now undo 
and wish I could, somehow, 

do again