After the Fire, Before the Ax

The dry heat stays in the holler.

The cabin logs are standing square and sound,

though the timber was burned forty years back.

You write from a season that is not yet been.

The coat on your back is still growing on the sheep,

and the sheep is only clover,

and the clover is hidden deep under the winter ice.

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The orange lily opens in the weeds.

That happened three months ago.

Or it happens tomorrow when the team comes back.

The iron plow cuts the steep slope

before the mule ever feels the harness pull.

We count the rings inside the oak log

long before the acorn falls into the dirt,

long before the water wears a path through the gap.

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Sunlight pours backward down the holler.

It fixes the broken jar buried in the mud,

making the jar whole where it lay in the dark.

The apple trees stand in the mind of the boy

who will watch them die when he is old.

You look out toward the high gap,

watching the woods that were cleared a lifetime ago,

listening for the thunder that shook the house this morning.

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The mountain keeps its own time.

The ax has not bit into the bark,

yet the mountain is already bare and brown.

The frost is gone before the cold can settle.

The hymn is finished before the tongue moves.

The fog takes the high rocks,

then drops them back into the sky,

wiping out the path we walk

even as we put our burdens on the dirt.