Sole Impression

No matter how far over the hillwe get, this workhorse pressand I are still on the same page,throwbacks lying low, boundby the cause of words.In the basement shop,where centuries become hours,to ink the plate, crank the lever,then handfeed sheet after sheetwhile rollers rasp across typelays down a beat I can graspas if lastingness flowslike current through muscleand metal, each clearlymoved by the other. Here,like gnostic gospel, solitudestacks up against talk,tapping a cast-iron veinof tradition whose bottom-lineis the obsolete, what doesn'tchange, changing hands.Behind the scenes, prioritieshinge on problems solvedwith pure tinkery luck, witha bond between machines,one living, one not, butwhen bed and platen meet,when I see the soleimpression of every lettercatching light, it all seemssomehow human, especiallyat the end, collating done, signatures sewn, as we go ourseparate ways: this press and Itoward yesterday, to start againfrom scratch, the handmade booktoward tomorrow, a newbornrelic, grandfathered in.