Measuring Up (Poetry)

I had a wooden ruler years ago —
school ink stained — when I never gave a thought
to origins — the tree from which it came
the forest or the land it felt at home.

Twelve inches sawn and smoothed as uniform
as all those standard markings on its spine
nothing of itself except the grain
preserved but incidental, blurred beneath.

Outside my window a tall stand of pines
impress the sky — stretch sixty feet above
reversing the equation — man to tree —
and so I’m cut to size, my smallness known.