Skip to main content
SearchLoginLogin or Signup

Woodsmoke

Published onDec 09, 2024
Woodsmoke
·


Woodsmoke


While driving through the countryside in winter,
down roads where land is farms, not neighborhoods,
I’ll catch a whiff of woodsmoke hanging faint
along a fencerow,
scan the field to see
a chimney in the distance spilling out
slow-motion ghosts to haunt the porch and trees,


remember the ash that used to tint
my shoes and coat the stand of figurines 
above the mantel.
That simmering hiss
and a pop of hickory slabs that fell through grates
into a pan it was my job to dump.

That silent walk in pitch black February, 
the path I couldn’t see
but trusted toward,
no trace of me but breath I sensed inside.


Volume 39, no. 2, 2011

Jeff Hardin is the author of seven collections of poetry, most recently Watermark, A Clearing Space in the Middle Of Being, and No Other Kind of World. His work has been honored with the Nicholas Roerich Prize, the Donald Justice Prize, and the X. J. Kennedy Prize.
Comments
0
comment
No comments here
Why not start the discussion?