The Chimney

THE CHIMNEY / Dan Stryk (after Thoreau) To build this. To build this lonely way to heaven. The white sand gathered, grey rocks dug from the shadowed littoral, the loon's cry wavering like a hollow face, my face so long extinguished, in the violent branch-crossed red of evening sun. I tow my dug-out slowly through the chill muck near the shore— generations of small things have trampled or slow-sifted to this slime my coarse toes knead. To build this, I have given half my life. It spires not yet halfway up, a white-grey roughness beckoning the falling sun, the heaven's leaving heat—like a last dull finger of despair. Yet I am not alone. The hut, firm, rough-logged, now surrounds me like a shell. Still, winter's nearing, thin ice, here and there, has slowed the water's riffling pulse. But the screech-owl, frozen sculpture in the trees, will leap to truth—swift rising in its secret heat—when once again I near. It flies away, dark pinions spread, the rabbit leaping from its hunched repose. And the chimney, not yet finished, 36 · The Missouri Review purls its faint stream from these hands. Gloom of a cold season, once again the wait for spring: the oozing mud— bronze glitter from the railroad bank, the slow grey spiral lifework of a man. Dan Stryk The Missouri Review · 37 ...