Splitting Wood In Winter 

By Douglas Woodsum 

You’ll need a barn with a big door, the old-

fashioned kind that hangs on wheels, slides open

down a track. You’ll need a bare bulb, the sun

having sunk before your return from work.

You’ll need a splitting maul (the ax always

gets stuck), a medieval weapon perfect

for pillaging heat from the heart of hardwood.

You can plug in the portable radio

or just listen to the hush of the swing,

then thwack … or thoonk, the soft clinks or cloonks

of the splits falling from the chopping block

onto the old, thick, scarred floorboards of the barn.

You’ll need your hands to rip apart pieces

still connected by strips of unsplit wood.

You’ll need to load the canvas carrier

thrice, enough to survive the dead of night.

You won’t need reminding, “Splitting wood warms

you twice: once chopping it, once burning it.”

You’ll smile walking through the cold, back to the house,

your hot breath a harbinger of wood smoke.

Take Heart: A Conversation in Poetry is produced in collaboration with the Maine Writers & Publishers Alliance. Poem copyright © 2010 Douglas Woodsum. Reprinted from “The Lawns of Lobsterman,” Moon Pie Press, by permission of Douglas Woodsum. Questions about submitting to Take Heart may be directed to Gibson Fay-LeBlanc, special consultant to the Maine poet laureate, at mainepoetlaureate@gmail.com or 228-8263. “Take Heart: Poems from Maine,” an anthology collecting the first two years of this column, is now available from Down East Books.