____for Clarence Wolfshohl
Calloused
from the handles
of the hammers and saws
with which he built
his two-story house,
they move through the air
deft as the acrobatics
of hummingbirds.
They are a palimpsest
redolent with the pages
of a million books.
During their finest hours,
when not pressing keys
into poems of light,
they take tweezers,
pinch and lift type
from a type case,
set it with precision
in a composing stick,
ink it, press it
into sheets of linen
paper, and hang them
to dry into pages
of literature.
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