After rain, a cold night.  The firewood is wet

And with my father's knife I cut away the bark,

Whittle as he once did curls of dry kindling,

Lay the small logs first and light the fire.

Drops of water seep to the surface, dance

From ring to ring in a sizzling memory -

My great-grandmother boiling water for tea,

Adding a split to her wood-burning stove,

Her white hair embering over the fire-box,

The teakettle old and leaking on the grate.

This wood remembers its own old story . . .

Shudders and snaps, reddens then blackens,

The sounds and the smoke rising up,

Neither words nor song but something older

Than both, the echoes of the first forest,

Lightning-struck in the primal storm.