The Project List

My wife likes to watch me work,

retired and out of my element, felling trees

around the yard, the roar of the chain

saw loud enough to shut her out, her planning,

and lock me into myself, focused, for a short while

anyhow, just long enough to take down a tree listing

too far for her comfort. And I can drop

a stubborn fir, most times, close

to a planned fall, laying it cleanly between two trees,

a trail of sawdust littered around a fresh-cut

stump and a soft mattress of boughs limbed

at my feet, limbs my wife would cart away

almost as soon as I severe them, cut

them off from the body where they grew,

useless now and burned as scrap in a smoky fire.

More times than not, though, I hang it

up against another tree, snagged

at the upper branches, interlocking

and holding it fast, compounding

my frustration and the task of finishing

the job, as she contemplates what to do,

what I would leave as it is, as it fell,

wait for a strong wind to bring it down,

let nature take care of itself in its own time.

And while my wife sees a project checked

off her list to do and a cord of wood cut

and split and stacked for the winter months ahead,

the poet I am, my element, in my dreaming images

nature cut down unnecessarily, man’s dominion,

and the concentric rings of a tree’s age,

exposed now, become but a life cut short,

as are we all, the ages of our own lives

cut down in our feeble attempts

to conquer what we cannot take,

take what we cannot conquer, to store

it away for the leaner years ahead,

the winter years of our lives that come

before we are ready, and ill-prepared,

despite the trees we fell and cut,

split and stack to keep us warm,

to ward off the waning years ahead.