The Blue Nile (for Richard Worthy)

That's Richard, smallish in build, taut and compact, just back from Viet Nam, plowing into a dense redwood burl with over-sized drill... "It's for my chess set," he explains, the wood flattening slightly along the top, then dark below, a burrow, hollowed out, for king, queen, bishop, knight... Heavily worked, all the gouges showing, he's finally got it ready...so now the coup de grâce--a quart of amber polyester resin, sliding slowly down the sides, this flashy polish revealing every bump. Antithetical to something--to what--that's the point, if we only knew...

A vast river flows north--but we can turn it around: the great Nile, bring water to all of Central Africa. A dream? Of course, a dream--what else do we have...