Man, I was out this morning at dawn, watching the sunrise
paint our white house pink, and it was damn near glorious.
I fed Ralph the Cat, scratched his fat belly, came in,
had my tea and it felt pretty nice to be doing what I was doing.

I did some writing, exercises, business, mail; Martha and I
talked about the usual stuff while she had her caffeine fix.
She went off to town, I went to cut and split firewood,
which is what I do this time of year; and I thought, damn

it’s such a beautiful, clear, cold Missouri day that I really
ought to try to get it down in words. I’ve been obsessively
working on a book forever, especially since I’ve spent
so much time in L.A.. I’m nearly there, and I feel like

I’m coming out of a fog, I haven’t written anything new
in a long time, and here I am on this beautiful day, cutting wood
by the small pond—ice-covered, with a skiff of snow, blown
and frozen across the surface like frosting, and it hit me—I miss poetbay.

I don’t know if I have anything left in me to write,
other than this sort of thing, I guess we’ll see, and it’s funny
how being offline for so long changed the nature of my day,
hours that would have been spent reading and commenting

were available for other pursuits, which was, and is, cool,
and the book has been consuming me, which left no room
for new stuff, but it’s a lonely world out there for writers
without the give and take, and a man can’t split wood all day.



Splitting Wood on a Cold Morning

Sitting in the Scout
while it warms up, blowing
smoke rings

of frosty air, admiring the color
of the sky.
It’s cold, the saw is near frozen, the oil congealed.

I pull the chain over the bar by hand
until it runs freely,
then I choke and pull.

It fires on the fifth or sixth pull
and Bob’s my uncle.
(Thanks Lucy, for that bon mot.)

A big ole white oak limb
split and fell over Govinda’s grave.
I moved it yesterday

with the tractor and loader,
my intention to cut it for wood,
and my intention is becoming a reality.

I cut, the chain needs sharpening,
it’s veering to starboard,
but I left the file in the shop.

Such is life.
There isn’t much to cut in any case.
I cut one eighteen inch log,

shut down the saw, take off the hard hat
and hearing protection,
get my yellow-handled splitting maul, and whack!

I need to see how it splits
before I get too carried away.
It don’t want to split.

Whack, whack, whack.
Take that, log.
It’s not too bad, I’ve split worse,

white oak can be a bear.
So I cut and split the limb, a limb
the size of a small tree,

for it's an ancient oak, appropriately gnarled,
and it comes to me, as I wrote above, I miss ya'll,
and here I am, writing as if no time has passed,

writing the same old stuff, in the same old
three line stanzas, but it’s familiar
and I like writing about such things,

and where’s the harm?
I’m thinking about L.A., and how friggin’ different
it is to be here doing this,

thinking about such things as this,
and the troops—Ken, Fog, Beck, Josephus,
and every last anonymous, and non-anonymous, one of you,

and how much I miss ole Sam,
but not much else about the ranch.
Such a pretty day.