Splitting Wood
(poem)
This is a poem about something that I saw as I was growing up. We lived on a farm and we had to cut and split our own firewood. For the tough parts, we used splitting wedges. Now if you hit a splitting wedge with a 10 pound mall many thousand times, over the course of several decades, the wedge gets hammered into a new shape, like it or not. I was unable to find an image on the internet which was as beautiful as the lacy accidental ironwork I saw as a farm boy, but this gives you the idea:
Splitting Wood The workman strikes the iron wedge until its edges curl and spread and hammers till they crack again again—again—until they yield a pattern delicate as frost. Sharp and flaking brittle breaking metal making branching tree. A man without a thought about it hammers out its filigree. How strange the pattern wrought by these rude blows— it is beyond the workman’s thought, but the iron knows.
(Blue Unicorn, Autumn 2025)


these moments that take us back home are everything. i grew up with farmers myself, very bittersweet
Gorgeous! In structure, idea, and feel.