Craftsmanship
beneath night’s skin he unearths raw stones
serrated encrusted enigmatic cold
tumbling them in two-twenty grit wears away the dull
four hundred six hundred highlights the delicate
garnet’s exposed seam agate’s brittle dendrites
whilst softest serpentine disintegrates to dust
in quiet solitude he worries
facets of captured moonlight won’t be enough
in the age of electric light blue light
boutiques and diners that never shut
the glow of irrelevance radiates
Charles G. Lauder, Jr, is an American poet who lives in the UK. He’s the author of the collection The Aesthetics of Breath (V.Press, 2019) and three pamphlets, the most recent being Year of the Rat (Blueprint Poetry Press, 2025).