North. The bare time.
The same quick dark
from Rutland to Nome,
the utter chill.
Winter stars. After
work, splitting birch
by the light outside
his back door, a man
in Maine thinks what
his father told him,
splitting outside
this same back door:
every November, his
father said, he thought
when he split wood
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of what his father
said the night he
right here died: just
after supper, his
father said, his father
came out back, looked
out at the sky
the way he had
for years, picked up
his ax, struck
the oak clean, and
was himself struck
down; before he
died he just had
this to say:
this time of
year the stars
come close some fierce.
Lifelines:Selected Poems 1950-1999
Viking
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