Firewood

By Joseph Griffiths 

I lived my life like the recluse

tucked within his barky coat

amid the dark boreal forest

I kept still, not wishing

to uproot that hidden

light and dark, knowledge

I only wished to see

everyday, more terribly

that beautiful thing that passed me

he seemed moved or stuck

in some otherworldly energy

a love, it was obvious,

that would elude my judgement.

Until one day, he began hacking

and I was feeling unsteady

later, in the evening, snapping

into my bed, cut apart in dreams

and becoming lumber, for she, to him,

was arriving

II

behind the black vehicle

he trailed his hungered

imagination

his eyes gouging her letters,

in exegetical fervour, he sought

to bring her

toward him, the words to

            move

but they sat, like disordered warriors

preferring silence

on their way to the battlefront

stacking the timber to air-dry

he brooded over photos

from a drawer, entering her

into the firing engine of the mind

seeking,

as a coal miner

to extract and bring her to the air

and renew his own combustion

to bring her on stage

bundled with stories

III

I even suppose he imagined that

with that felled wood

left long in the stove

with their faces briefly flickering

they would recall their time apart

as two drifting entities

And that as the night, began to draw

them closer, they’d grow

wild again,

and close their ranks,

and forever knot themselves

in the forest.

IV

My voice, crackled,

could not warn him

of the danger

of this hopeless yearning

spreading and burning

wood, to carpet

Drawing the curtains, revealing

His face lost in the fire.