I thought of you this afternoon
as I bent down under the old front oak
to pick up sticks. They were all over –
twigs, branches, whole limbs broken off
under the wet heft of a late winter snow
and broken again against the ground
with their own weight crashing.
Scabbed, cindery, riddled by insects,
the windfall snapped easily in my hands,
all its give gone,
and I gathered them,
thinking you would have too, and how to a child
this once seemed pointless,
like picking litter from a parking lot,
which you also insisted on. Now
six armloads of dead oak lie stacked
on the porch – enough to kindle
in the soft ash on cold stone
a month of fire.

From As If Gravity Were a Theory (Cider Press, 2006).
Used with the author’s permission.