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He eats in silence as frost plumes
at the panes and stars tighten,
teeth marks on the freezing sky.
His boots stand in snow water,
melting by the wood stove that he burns
hot to husk his legs of cold.
The fire bumps, drops, cracks
in the stove. His wife and daughters’
talk goes louder then softer,
in and out of the raw, raw
of the chain saw still in his head
where he fells trees that moan
before they drop muted by the snow.
His legs hurt in the snow,
then his body heat loosens the ice
in his beard and as he prunes
the fallen trunks, he opens the zippers
his wife sewed into his pants
across the thigh, behind the knee,
like the slits in a pie. The trees
don’t bleed in winter.
Sap pulls back to the core.
He rises, shudders a crowbar
through the slender iron doorway
to the red flare inside.


Connie Voisine
Posted over on Ploughshares