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)