I open a tree.
In the stupefying cold
—ice on bare flesh a scald—
I seat the metal wedge
with a few left-handed swipes,
then with a change of grips
lean into the eight-pound sledge.
It’s muslin overhead.
Snow falls as heavy as salt.
You are four months dead.
The beech log comes apart
like a chocolate nougat.
The wood speaks
first in the tiny voice
of a bird cry, a puppet-squeek,
and then all in a rush,
all in a passionate stammer.
The papery soul of the beech
released by wedge and hammer
flies back into air.
Time will do this as fair
to hickory, birch, black oak,
easing the insects in
till rot and freeze combine
to raise out of wormwood cracks,
blue and dainty, the souls.
They are thin as an eyelash.
They flap once, going up.
The air rings like a bell.
I breathe out drops—
cold morning ghost puffs
like your old cigarette cough.
See you tomorrow, you said.
You lied.
first published in The New Yorker on February 2, 1976, p. 34 and then in The Retrieval System, Viking/Penguin, 1978
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