There's something in the way he wrote,
a bit of short story, a bit of current events,
and a history from the place where people lived,
and died, and the nature of human thought
that to me make his poems live on.
The Wood - Pile
Out walking in the frozen swamp one gray day.
I paused and said, "I will turn back from here.
No, I will go on farther--and we shall see."
The hard snow held me, save where now and then
One foot went through. The view was all in lines
Straight up and down of tall slim trees
Too much alike to mark or name a place by
So as to say for certain I was here
Or somewhere else: I was just far from home.
A small bird flew before me. He was careful
To put a tree between us when he lighted,
And say no word to tell me who he was
Who was so foolish as to think what he thought.
He thought that I was after him for a feather----
The white one in his tail; like one who takes
Everything said as personal to himself.
One flight out sideways would have undeceived him.
And then there was a pile of wood for which
I forgot him and let his little fear
Carry him off the way I might have gone,
Without so much as wishing him good-night.
He went behind it to make his last stand.
It was a cord of maple, cut and split
And piled---and measured, four by four by eight.
And not another like it could I see.
No runner tracks in this year's snow looped near it.
And it was older sure than this year's cutting.
Or even last year's or the year's before.
The wood was gray and the bark warping off it
And the pile somewhat sunken. Clematis (a perennial vine)
Had wound strings round and round like a bundle.
What held it, though, on one side was a tree
Still growing, and on one a stake and a prop,
These latter about to fall. I thought that only
Someone who lived in turning to fresh tasks
Could so forget his handiwork on which
He spent himself, the labor of his ax,
And leave it there far from a useful fireplace
To warm the frozen swamp as best it could
With the slow smokeless burning of decay.
The poem reminds me of the natural forests,
how things live and die, like old trees that
fall. But then they also fall,
By the hands of man.
Still, the smokeless decay, more rushed.
Like N. Michigan where trees were all cut
to build cities, and towns far away.
Or like Stump Town north of San Francisco
where the Redwoods once lived so thick
in the forest near the Pacific coast.
They called it Stump Town because
you had to follow the stumps in the thick forest,
as it was the only way to find the town,
even during the day.
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