And the last poem--
Once a year, my husband and kids and I,
and my sister when she can be there, visit my mother.
It's going to happen next month at Thanksgiving.
And we put in her wood for the year.
She uses a wood burning furnace in Central Wisconsin,
and uses a lot of wood.
My father's goal when he died was
to have five years of cordwood stacked up for her,
and he had six.
[LAUGHTER]
But he's not there to stack new wood anymore.
So my cousin Peter who has a wood service, and thanks
to whom I have a feed cap that says Gregerson Tree
Service with one of those plastic adjustable things
takes the dead wood down and leaves it there for us, loans
as his hydraulic splitter, which is really something.
But we-- and as we age we do this more and more, moved over,
more and more like Mrs. Exner there, but it's something we--
it makes us feel very good.
And as you can see I boast about it,
I feel like it's a credential.
OK.
Last poem I'll read.
It's to my father, and it's called "Cord--"
and the kind that's called C-O-R-D.
"Dearest, we filled up the wood room this week.
Karen, and Steven, and the I and Peter's truck.
You would have been amused to see us in our woodsman mode.
It's your wood still.
And you know those homely cruxes where
the odd piece split, near the fork for instance,
has to be turned till it's made to fit
and another lame one found for the gap?
Sap just yesterday.
Smoke in the end this clubfoot marking the mean time.
I came to one of them.
One of the numberless justnesses, a life
of stacking wood affords.
Had you even broken rhythm?
And for just that instant had you back.
I know, I know it wasn't the last
despite the strangled heaving of your chest,
despite the rattled exhalation and the leavened livid meat
born smell.
It wasn't the last till after word.
I have made that my excuse.
But mother was sleeping not five feet away.
She'd scarcely slept in weeks, I could have waked her.
I, sweet darling, the morphine under your tongue, and much
your quiet hands to blame.
And when we had dismantled this last but one
of the provident stores you'd left,
a winter's worth of warmth in each and hold it in.
We split and stacked the new oak Peter felled last spring.
We took a day off in between, we wrapped ourselves in virtue,
we can be good children yet.
The ginkgos have come back from their near poisoning.
Have I told you that?
Our tenants are remorseful.
He's sworn off new insecticides.
My hour with you, one breath, one more was theft."
Thank you.