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Ann Clark-Moore

Winter Heat

We have been harvesting the dead - -
a maple that
after some seventy years
has succumbed to summer lightning strike,
a stand of cherry,
dead from disease so recently
that the moisture sill bubbles,
gumming the chains on the saws.

We only take the dead.
The engines bubble and gargle
with the older ones
as the saws walk through the wood,
throwing sweet-smelling chips.
The trees have been downed, skidded out,
chopped into manageable pieces,
and loaded into the old wagon.

Maybe you have driven through the country
after a “Bed and Breakfast” weekend on the St. Lawrence
to “view the foliage.”
Maybe you’ve smelled the curious and spicy scent of
        wood smoke
carried miles in the frost.
You’ve sighed and smiled

or you’ve scowled,
demanded,
“Can you imagine? Someone burning these
        beautiful trees?”
Understand.
We take only the dead.

The old people repeat the same old saw.
Wood warms you three times.
When you cut it –
there’s more than just chain-sawing a tree to the ground;
you have to know the arcane geometry of the landscape
and how to skid one dead trunk to clear ground.
Then there is splitting wood,
which, even with noisy machinery, is a matter of carrying
heavy chunks to the splitter,
placing the wood so the wedge comes with the grain,
depressing the lever, halve and halve again, quarter,
        and toss to the pile.
There is a messy beauty in the blown architecture
as a tree is disassembled.

Wood warms you when you stack it in cords.
You key and puzzle it together,
jigsawing it like the old rock walls
that stride unevenly across the pastures,
carry, fit, balance, carry again.
Even on a cool autumn day,
when the blue of the sky is pale and unwinking
with the depths of a child’s marble,
you find you strip off jacket, then outer shirt,
left at last with dripping t-shirt
while your eyes sting with sweat.

At last wood warms you
when it burns dry and hot
like valentines
half a century old,
flame caressing the cherry, maple, and oak
until coals glare as orange as Jack o’ lanterns.

We have been harvesting the dead
until my arms ache with it
and the small of my back stiffens from bending
and my legs cramp.
My hands are rough as emery board,
dry and cracked,
and the pallets are full from floor to ceiling.

If during your foliage-viewing weekend tour
you catch the faint whiff of wood smoke,
remember these were the dead,
their hearts enkindled for a moment.
You may think you see the winter heat in the red and
       orange of the leaves
before you drive to your city home.