Axe, Maul And Wedge

 

 

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

The Sunday Muse

Images: Wedge, by user Shakespeare, public domain via wikimedai commons Fair Use

Photo of axe via Sunday Muse Fair Use

Flash Friday 55 Halloween Edition 2020

 

 

 Welcome all, to the All Hallows' edition of the Friday 55. In a year where almost every day has felt like Halloween, it may be hard to get into the spirit of this ancient celebration of the thinning of the veil between the quick and the dead. It may be too tragic to think of all those who were here and now are gone in this year of plague rampant and its utter chaos, with a dubious future ahead.

 

Nonetheless, this exercise continues, and let the 55 chips fall where they may, as we remember happier if not scarier times, and the originator of this meme, Galen Hayes, by attempting to have a writer's kickass weekend to a radioactive Jack-O-Lantern's glow.

 

The rules remain the same. Write a poem, piece of prose poetry or flash fiction in exactly 55 words, no more, no less, and post your link in the comments below. I will be by to read whatever has haunted you this week.

The meme will be live from Thursday at the Witching Hour til Sunday at 4 pm.

 

 

~ * ~

 

Here is my 55. We have had a historic and crippling ice storm here, and the ghosts of my trees are with me in this piece.

 

 

 

 

 Icestorm

 

 

 

 

 I woke in the dryads' dying hours

to the champagne-crack of their maple towers

falling; ice-winds honed a banshee tune,

a butcher's knife to carve the pumpkin moon. 

1000 suns of supple leaf expire

when winter kicks down summer's flimsy door;

a protean shift from sheeted ice to fire

to dryads' ash on Halloween's dancing-floor.

 

 

 

October 2020

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 Images: The Woodland Dryad, © Jesse T. Banfield, 1913 via wikimedia commons Fair Use

Redbud ruins, October 2020 ice storm, © joyannjones