Song of a Reformed Headhunter

I wrote my poem "Woodwork" in response to a poem by the Irish poet Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin. Section 18 of her long poem "The Rose-Geranium" begins: I run my hand along the clean wood And at once I am stroking the heads Of everyone in the room. The wood image immediately recalled, for me, the sessions of woodworking in secondary school. I was hopeless at turning a plank of wood into a door wedge or a pencil holder, but I did love the smell and touch of the material, which Ni Chuilleanáin's lines brought back so powerfully for me. The feel of the clean wood sends her out into the streets, on a failed quest. I look, and fail, in the street Searching for a man with hair like yours. The eroticism of touch resonated strongly with me, and so I wrote a poem about handling a piece of wood and being unable to handle the boy across the worktable, who was working with such alluring mastery on his project. Then I read A Book of Women Poets from Antiquity to Now ,...