Slowly, the Shine

My mother tells me stories of her father,
a woodworker when farming gave him time.
He built the writing desk given to me,
which waits in Minnesota until I get a home.

I grew up with that desk, but not its builder,
for my grandpa died when I was two.
The desk has lasted years,
always glowing in a corner of the house.
I think of him and the hours
he must’ve spent in his tin shed, creating.
Mom tells me he rubbed and rubbed
the linseed oil into his wood.
The desk still shines.

And I sit and write these poems,
working and working the words in my head
and I am trying, grandfather I never knew,
to make them shine.