For this first Deep Water column of September, we turn to autumnal promise and comfort on the eve of Rosh Hashanah. In “Stacking Wood Prayer,” Jo Radner takes us among the woodpiles and into “blessed gratitude” on the cusp of the Jewish holy days. I love this poem’s clear, tangible imagery and its spirit of ritual.

Radner is a Maine Yankee, descended from some of the earliest English settlers in western Maine, but also a Jew by choice. Some of her poetry reflects her Maine heritage and its uncomfortable history vis à vis this land’s Indigenous population; some sees life in Maine through a Jewish lens. She lives in Lovell.

Stacking Wood Prayer

By Jo Radner

Often now,
as the days shorten
the full moon dwindles
the evenings freshen
and the gates will soon
stand open,
I daven in the woodshed,
down and up
in blessed gratitude
for the solid heft
of maple, beech, and oak.
Bending to wheelbarrow,
hoisting to stack,
fitting chunk to chink,
tapping the sawn ends even –
caught up in the ceremony
of autumn, I can bear
the raucous going of the geese,
the ferns’ shabby rust.
May this hoard
warm my world
keep it safe
till the dark
season wanes
till my heart
breaks and heals
till we all
can unfurl
to new day.

Megan Grumbling is a poet and writer who lives in Portland. Deep Water: Maine Poems is produced in collaboration with the Maine Writers & Publishers Alliance. “Stacking Wood Prayer,” copyright © 2020 by Jo Radner, appears by permission of the author.