Teak's Way (2)

When I placed the knife blade against the wood, I went back in time...  I was siting by a river.   There was a piece of wood that was floating by and I scooped it out of the languidly flowing water.  Nothing was moving fast that day.  There was a lull to all of existance.

The piece of wood - a branch about wrist-thick - did not seem to have been in the water for long.  It seemed like it was green wood - wood that had not been away from its tree for very long.  Its end was of a wind-shorn sort of rip of strands.  I imagined the wind storm in the past night's darkness, and envisioned the branch straining to maintain itself against the pull of swind.  Maybe a larger branch had fallen upon it.

I looked closer.  Yes, there was a rip upon the bark, like something had been dashed upn it, maybe as it hit the ground, maybe to induce it to break and fall.  I felt like I could walk upstream and find the tree that it had been ripped from.

I moved the knife blade against the teak.  When I had mentioned to friends that I had gotten a piece of teak, they asked if it was actual teak - maybe it was acacia, they ventured.  But I had explored it and had come to the conclusion that it was actual teak.  Fine-grained, oily, smelling of leather.  The knife dug through some first initial grain, and like most times, I felt the blade warm to the wood, like it needed to gauge the wood for a few cuts before settling upon the texture of the rhythm - a texture of slow yet solid growth amidst a spectrum of seasons.  I felt like I could begin to see the tree.  What a majestic tree it must have been.

And I felt like I could begin to see a spoon.