Ice Storm and Gettin' In Wood

The ice storm this past week took down part of one of the trees in my front yard. I heard the 'limb' (it was 18" in diameter), fall and went out to find the limb across the road. It brushed the telephone and power lines across the street, but didn't take them down. It did send a whiplash that pulled services from several houses across the street. About 200,000 Mainer's lost their power for part or all of Friday (ours was back by the end of the day). My parents lost power until Saturday night and as of tonight, there are still folks without power.

This afternoon, I went over to the Farm to help my Dad get up wood from the woodlot. He sold wood to a person in return for stove-length cut wood left in the lot. We still needed to split the wood and get it under cover. I worked there for the afternoon and we got up about a half a cord, split and stacked and probably another cord, unsplit. I thought I might find a good Robert Frost poem this week about chopping wood or something. But as I was looking through my copy of Come In and Other Poems, I found a poem I had written to a friend of mine in 1978. The title refers to the Fryburg Fair and the closing in of the season after October. I tried in that image of the smooth turn of a hawk's head to capture the inevitable turning of the seasons. The images of the farm are for the most part autobiographical. - real or imagined. At the time, I was pretty certain that I was going to live on a farm, learn to play the fiddle and smoke good dope with my friends for the rest of my days. I blame John Denver. But actually, people were flocking back to the land in Maine in the 1970's and it really wasn't so far fetched a future. Seems like another century . . . oh wait?! Well, maybe it would not be a bad idea to get a decent Jotul in the house after all?

AFTER THE FAIR

For David

The closure of a hawk's eye
Compass the stone field, dead leaf
Trampled path of cattle, woodchuck, cat.
All within the twisting fence road
Curl into the barnyard, closing
Like the last rose before the frost.
The herd deserts the lower pasture
For the barnyard feed bunk, jostling for
Summer's grass corpse of measured
Nourishment.

Hard wood, potato, beef in the freezer;
Short days, lamp light, laughter;
Cold curses, chores, wool and woodsmoke.

In the ice-flowered morning, the fox
Cannot hear the empty chicken coop,
Nor mice the sleeping bees.
Quicker than sunrise, the hawk's
Studied glance comes round

And it is Winter.