fordy's web of words

Stacking Wood

Stacking Wood

Twenty-eight degrees and the phone rang.
(not those tiny F'ng degrees I grew up with.
not twenty-eight - just below freezing
but those big, fat, scorching Cee degrees.
that's twenty-eight percent boiling.)
Hot.

"Want me to bring round that truck of wood?"
(that's fire-wood, not lumber.
Big bits you can measure in fractions of a tree.
Might get two at a time in the log burner;
some bits won't fit at all.)
"Now?"

I want to say, "come again another day."
(But like rain, wood isn't always there
when you need it. Grab it while you can;
you'll not regret it when the snow piles up
on the power lines and brings them down.)
"Sure."

He turns up, smiling, "Nice day for it."
(The mountain tips out with a rumble.
I can work up a sweat just looking at this
amount of work. Today I don't need to bother.
I'm twenty-eight degrees boiling already.)
"Yeah."

"That's one-hundred and forty please."
(So, now I have to pay for the privilege
of working my but off
on a twenty-eight degree day.
Hell, that's five bucks a degree!)
"Thanks"

I start stacking wood in the shed.
(Turning a shapeless heap of logs
into a neatly stacked cube of firewood,
sweat drop by sweat drop, ain't easy;
not like the wooden blocks I had as a kid.)
Carefully.

Twenty-eight degrees and I'm stacking wood.
(It's true; wood makes you hot twice.
Hot in the cuttin' and stackin'
and hot again in the burnin'.
But this wood is burning me up.)
Delirious