Firewood and Ashes

Firewood becomes ashes, it does not become wood again. Don’t think that wood is first, ashes after. . . . Life is life, death is death and are each in their own place like winter and spring. Winter does not become spring, spring does not become winter.

—Eihei Dogen

We cut them, one by one. How else were we to fell maple, beech, and ash? One by one they dropped, were trimmed, sawed, and hauled

to the yard beside the barn. One by one I split still-living limbs and trunks and stacked them loosely, letting fresh air circulate

between their freshly split fibers. How else transform a breathing tree into a fuel which, for good or ill, the world calls firewood?

2

We sat beside your stove discussing this and that— Carruth’s adverse opinion of Walden and Thoreau, the merits of a life

lived, in part, alone. That was how you liked it, you claimed, though soon enough your talk turned from poets or mallards on your pond

to gossip, kind or cruel— who said what to whom or who was leaving whom. And all the while your wood was turning into ashes.

3

Yes, we combust ourselves from morning until night. No action could be plainer, no truth more evident. But what particular loss,

Need, or cherished value compelled you to combust your mind’s midnight oil perusing students’ journals, each intimate detail

demanding your attention? Whole weekends you went at it, poring over stories of drinking, drugs, abuse, as though they were your own.

4

Silence, you once wrote, was what you craved the most. Why, then, did you subject your senses to the racket the spring peepers made

and why did you endure the self-imposed distractions of Scrabble, crossword puzzles, and always-answered calls? What you most enjoyed,

I think, was listening, whether what you heard was a clear well-chosen word or, sometimes, a log falling with a thud.

5

Forty years of friendship. One by one they rise, these memories, as if they might resume a story or fashion out of fire

a single breathing person. So let those sparks arise, and let that smoke disperse, knowing as we do that even firewood

does and doesn’t turn to ashes. Here and now the flowers that you loved are blooming near your urn as if you still might listen.