Worked today on a simple shelf made from crepe myrtle limbs my neighbor pruned and held back for me. “They were too pretty to throw in the woods,” he said because of their lack of rough bark. I was dealing with limbs that had bent their way for years towards the changing angle of the sun. This kind of work is inexact, I warn you, but I worked towards a semblance of straight, bending the frame this way, that way. I even walked the corners across the deck until they stood upright. Tomorrow I’ll shift the corner legs and walk them again because my eyes see different after a full night’s sleep. Tomorrow I will do so many things perfectly, I promise.
Today I made crosses for dividing the rectangle frame into stronger triangles. Now the shelves won’t wobble when asked to hold jars of dried seeds for next year’s garden, or bottles of shampoo, or eventually, if lucky, books. I sanded off the summer rain mold, sanded the branch knots white. Some places were still green even though my neighbor had pruned these in late spring. It is summer, and his crepe myrtles are blooming pink, white, having recovered from the cutting.
I keep thinking of design—what more can be made of bent branches, what more is there to understand about sweat that comes from creating from what did not get thrown away?