WOODWORKING

Friends begin as a peg dropped through a hole:
There’s no resistance, no competing force--
Only the silent and invisible
Machinations of gravity that pull
The substance of one soul clean through the void
That fills the other. The motion is smooth.

But there’s only so far the peg can fall
Unaided. It will one day hit a board,
And soul will grind on soul in ways friends
Could never have imagined in free fall.
You need a hammer to break through the ground,
Except the ground is fragile. To hit too hard’s
To risk its loss. The secret is to chip
Around the peg, to break it down and through
One atom at a time. You need patience,
Infinite patience, that will make it fall
Forever, until there’s another ground.