And shivers its literal timbers.
Cold, wet and pleading,
Scarred by winter winds
And pasty snows,
My small field and patch of woods
Is now a monument
To aging neglect.
Shorn limbs and branches
Hang high and tangled
in the Sugar maples
(Widow makers we called them
Back in my logging days—
But that is a poem
For another day).
Even the last ash is too far gone
And will have to come down.
We already lost (last year)
The towering white pine
To heart-rot and beetles;
The fruit trees never took
To the shade and droughts,
And only the black cherry, neglected
In a sea of blackberry brambles,
Keeps growing unperturbed
In its stoic obedience
To tropism.
Always a lazy poet,
I find something else to do
And stoke the fire inside
And steep another strong coffee:
And tune my old saw
And scrape out the oiled dust
And clean the jets
And sharpen the chain
And lube the bar
And convince myself
The trees, too,
Can wait another day.
