Working the Woods

The roar and rattle of the chainsaw stops

with the unheard click of a button pushed.

And now, the last tree cut lies where it fell, broken,

and the wood, stove-length, stacked and ready

for splitting, winter’s seasoning, waits for another day;

and I, I wait, too, standing here amid the smell

of sawdust, fresh and pungent, tinged with evergreen,

the ringing in my ears diminishing into silence,

a silence punctuated with the hush of waves soft

on the shore breaking and the call of a loon

echoing, a shrill response from afar clearly heard;

and above me, a lone bird rustles, aflutter,

a song bird unafraid now in this silence to sing out,

nature’s silence, nature’s song returning when we cease

our noise and listen, just listen, waiting.

Fences

New England’s poet talks of fences,

of the need, good neighbors make,

“one on a side,” “walling in or walling out,”

but he reminds us, too, that “something there is

that doesn’t love a wall, that wants it down,”

and perhaps, it is us unloving, kept to our own side,

walled out and looking across the fence,

over the wall, ourselves a “frozen-ground-swell”

sent “to spill the upper boulders”

so we can pass, unimpeded, “to have the rabbit

out of hiding, to please the yelping dogs”

we’ve become these years, wanting what we lack

and cannot have, coveting our neighbors’

and forgetting the walls and fences

and New England’s poet’s words,

“good fences make good neighbors.”

A Summer Rain

A light summer rain today, damp and cold

enough to keep us inside, except

we venture out, the dog and I, walking,

just to get away and to clear our heads

clouded by a rainy day inside, a touch of cabin fever;

and we stop beneath a canopy of leaves overhead,

full and green above us and dry, quiet, too,

except for the falling rain, rhythmic and musical,

a music born of a summer rain pattering on dry leaves

and the quiet of venturing out, stopping

as we do now, beneath this canopy of green,

a Chuppah wedding us to the earth itself,

earth’s rhythms on a rainy day reminding us

we are foreigners here, seeking our place,

a place promised us, venturing out,

the dog and I, quiet, except for the falling rain,

beneath a canopy of leaves overhead, full and green.

Barn Flight

The old barn, weather-worn and gray,

opened its doors and took us in that summer’s afternoon,

cousins visiting, barn-less children, city-living,

took us into the dark and the sweet smell of hay-drying,

into a dimmed light, sunlight peeking in through barn-boards 

dried and gaping, and a lone window, cobwebbed and dusty,

a grimed light alive with dust-motes, visible now

in lingering light-flight, sparkling, inviting us in;

and we climbed to the rafters, daring, and dared,

tentative and afraid, but letting go, jumping out

and down, dust-motes ourselves taking flight, lingering

to land among the sweet smell of hay-drying,

old and dry and dusty straw piled high, catching us,

cushioning us, softening our fall, this childhood flight,

our laughter rafter filling, caught, in an old barn,

weather-worn and gray, opening its doors and taking us in.