Woodpile
The jagged mound waited streetside for pickup.
She recoiled at the stained, moist logs on top.
They displayed like off-color tributes at a funeral.
Inversely, this heap had spanned their two spruces
out back, in the family, for seventy years.
She must have been ten in the photo, turning from
the neat double rows back toward the house
with two logs sandwiched in her arms,
while behind her in his work clothes
her father tended the lower stack.
She’d maintained a single column
depositing found windblown limbs
and withdrawing for the odd winter fire
so was startled the spring after he died
to find one day it had collapsed.
Her dismantling slowed near the bottom.
The wood lacked cross-sections. It rested in her wagon
frail as her father, all mulch and bark chips and she recalled
how behind her in his work clothes he tended the lower stack
and how he’d always pulled from below.
To the ground, black and firm, she took a shovel
and to her surprise one by one raised timbers
laid lengthwise, a platform sunk. Turned reddish throughout.
Moist, the top beam of their first swing,
with its two rusty iron rings, lay there intact.
Woodpile
As a story I love this. I could hear it being told, with diversions hither and thither, ay any of the storytelling sessions I go to.
As a poem I am less convinced, I've fallen into the same trap myself of telling a story in a poem-like form but not really writing a poem and that's how it appears to me. Having said that I think that there is a really good poem that could be revealed from within this but it would also be a much shorter poem. Some of the detail that makes it a strong story could be excised or rewritten and the focus narrowed onto what you see as the meat of the poem.
Steve
As a poem I am less convinced, I've fallen into the same trap myself of telling a story in a poem-like form but not really writing a poem and that's how it appears to me. Having said that I think that there is a really good poem that could be revealed from within this but it would also be a much shorter poem. Some of the detail that makes it a strong story could be excised or rewritten and the focus narrowed onto what you see as the meat of the poem.
Steve
Lovely imagery connections in this Jackie. I can relate to how things reconnect to feelings of loss...and that recoiling with realisation. The use of 'moist' is particularly unsettling in the context. Effective how you use moist at the beginning and end of the poem where it become life-affirming.It rested in her wagon
frail as her father, all mulch and bark chips
enjoyed
mac
Thank you, Steve. I get caught in that dilemma so often, writing things that don't seem to make it as narrative poetry.
Mac, thank you so much for your observations. I'm glad the imagery worked for you.
Jackie
Mac, thank you so much for your observations. I'm glad the imagery worked for you.
Jackie