Chainsaw Cheer

In the eleventh day of Operation Relocate Domicile. In another 29 days it actually might be over, bar the fruit garden, but we will approach that as a separate manoeuvre. Tomorrow, new home chimneys are to be swept and the Rayburn lit. New Farmer Landlord says we can have wood from his shed, if we don’t mind cutting it down; do we have a chainsaw? Of course we do, it’s one of the few things that has set us aside from medieval peasants. We have been used to cutting down our own wood, in branches or by whole tree; chopping and dragging it by bits up the steep slippery stony thorny thistle strewn fields of Rosehill. Visceral, close to nature: also tiresome, time consuming. Mr can drive down to the shed in New Farmer Landlord’s yard, bring back all the wood on one trip.

My grin is so huge it curves off the earth like buffalo horns.

In honour of the hours spent, in celebration of the hours freed, here are eleven verses from a paused project, a poem of 1,000 ‘miracles,’ which I will be returning to and have been revising recently. The following events take place in late morning on a hot autumn day:

439

Enjoying the press of humidity

We choose a branch that hangs low over

The crunkled roof of the old sheep-shelter

Park up the wheelbarrow

440

We pause to plot, to pick out

The best angle for cleaving branch 

From tree, which spot to stack new logs

Where to stock the slim kindling twigs

441

Mr climbs the boundary of dry wall

Steadies himself with booted feet

Planted firmly down against granite

Stones, against ungainly trunk of tree

442

Chainsaw rattles. The elected angle tested

It is uncomplicated, reachable. Serrated

Blade rotates slickly through the branch

Drops it down onto the old buckled roof

443

Drag the cut wood clear

Admire the twist of it

Solidly muscular against soft

Textured fuzzes of field grass

444

Tangible overhead, a block

Of solid-blue sky. The branch

Is a compact mass, is weight

Pressed against the ground

445

Pushing feet into lumps of earth

Trace the strain from calf to rump 

Levering this length of beech

Out of the grappled twists of thorn

446

From weed-tangle the wood

Is dragged to open field, here

It will be portioned for the fire

Dreckly, Mr says, distracted

447

He eyes a wealth of stray branches

While in situ in the hedge here he will just

Zip the saw through a few more

I can see the sense in it

448

Sawdust sprays on a chainsaw wave

Scatters over leaves and lies on dirt

Whorls of flaxy tree slivers

Released, fly out, pattern down

449

Three more branches fall

Under the notches of sharpened

Blade. Each prize smugly heaved

From the field edge

450

Lines of heavy muscular

Streamlined monsters lie

Prone, like we have been

Hunting great beasts

[‘Crunkled’ is a made up word, describing crunched corrugated iron. ‘Dreckly’ is a dialect word, meaning, when I’m ready; similar to the Spanish ‘mañana.’]