scrap wood

every dad builds a time machine at some point.
i knew my father was working on one when
he started leaving in the morning before everyone else woke up.
he'd return with his jeep full of highway wood.
nails in jars all around the house. he kept
the basement door shut & locked as he worked.
didn't let anyone see. if you asked him what he was 
working on, he'd say, "not until it is done." 
everyone got splinters. that is the problem 
with family. you become the same organism.
the same hungers & the same urgencies. 
i dreamed only of scrap wood. where & how
to retrieve it. our fathers are sites of self-ending devotion.
i wanted to make him proud. once, i woke up
even before home. the world was dark 
& all the houses weren't real yet. i took several apart.
they were the vacant houses where there
used to be farms. i carried all the bones 
down into the basement. that is when i saw it.
this grand impossible machine.
buttons & lights & yearning. i stepped inside.
saw the "on" button & considered leaving. 
disappearing into a time when no one could find me. 
dinosaur flowers. a fresh moon.
instead i curled up & went to sleep.
i wanted him to find me. i wanted him
to be furious that i knew his secret.
he was not. inside, he lifted me,
like scrap wood, & carried me back to bed.
there he said, "you will understand
when you're older." i wish i would have asked him
where he wanted to go back to.
his childhood? to prehistory when
no one yet took a hatchet to the sky. 
i am older now & i still don't what he wanted
or what he wants. he still is collecting wood.
i am still, to the best of my knowledge,
the only person who has seen the machine.