Building Scaffold

"This is how we built scaffold,"
the old-timer says, driving a screw with his cordless drill,
"except
we didn't use screws or cordless drills."

Things change. Hardly a carpenter nowadays
uses a handsaw. The folding rule
has gone the way of the dodo, and even hammers
may soon be relegated
to Antiques & Collectibles.

A scaffold, however,
is temporary by definition, a minimal structure
intended to be torn down,
a kind of medieval siege tower, or a makeshift platform
from which to contemplate
impermanence.

As the old-timer says, "It will put you in places
where no one has ever been."

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