I have a memory of my grampa working out back in the woodshed, cutting kindling for the fire.  There was something about this activity, this moment that grips me in ways that are hard to describe.  So I wrote a poem.

Requiem

                                    An old man sits in a

                                    dark shed on a winter’s eve, and
                                    he is surrounded by
                                    cord wood packed tight,
                                    knots out and up against the aged frame.
                                    He is doused in the pale yellow light of
                                    a naked bulb, and he is thinking, not
                                    about the fixed circular saw before him or
                                    the kindling he is making with each
                                    screaming pass, but of something else:
                                    his alone.  The dog
                                    is warm inside the house.  The sky
                                    is black and deep.  The old man
                                    fills his wheelbarrow, rises, hoists,
                                    and pushes, his only utterance,
                                    the soft crunch of icy snow.