Swimming Through the Woodpile
Head down, hands in the broken orchard, my
back to the shed that is empty as ebb tide. Tossing
applewood behind me, chopped and split, rising like
whitecaps on the pile. Reaching over to the right, then
over to the left, racing the ruinous rain. Every third log or
so hits the back wall with a bull’s eye splash. Skin sweat and
cloud sweat trickle to a finish line. Splinters do their Aussie
crawl. A knotted limb does its butterfly. By the end of
this lap a fire can be lit, and this whole pool could be
easily boiled away.