Axe, Maul And Wedge
When you first brought me to the farm, you taught me how to
turn wood into fire. 'To part firewood fiber from fiber, to
make it small,' you'd say,'you think you need an axe.
An axe is sharp and showy; an axe has blade
and bite and swings like the
pendulum of god, but
what you really need to split the wood is a wedge.'You
smiled your wisdom-imparting smile, 'after all a
wedge was the first machine.' Where the
axe falters, beaten, the maul with blow
after blow pushes the wedge deep
between the weave of atoms
til wood breaks,
forced away from itself, no longer looking like anything
that was once alive, dryads' home, birds' harbor,
just kindling meat. And then is the time for
the axe, flying abrupt and wild as
a silver moon of cyclone through
the dry strings of bark and
heartwood.
And when it came time for the
splitting of us, you might say
you were the maul, she
was the wedge and I
the gaudy axe
attacking the last
tough fragments
of what we
were
to provide for
the next
fire.
February 2022
posted for
Images: Wedge, by user Shakespeare, public domain via wikimedai commons Fair Use
Photo of axe via Sunday Muse Fair Use
