It is the sound of the log splitting <br /> and its echo <br />which marks my passage <br />into manhood. My father stands <br />by the porch as the ax swings up <br /> and falls. <br />He studies the way I go <br />with the grain and let the ax do the work. <br />He studies the rolling of my shoulders <br />with each whack into the dense <br />wood. He remembers his own <br />father teaching him to swing a pick <br />in the dark tunnels <br />of the Pennsylvania coal mines. <br />With a carbide lamp <br />splitting the darkness, <br />he brought to the surface <br />buckets of coal. As he straitened <br />the stiffness out of his back and legs, <br />he’d squint into the harshness of light - <br />fearing the darkness behind him. <br />Now, after four, five, six logs <br />and after ten, eleven, twelve logs <br />split and stacked, he squints into the sun <br />breaking through the clouds <br />and sees the spots <br />of early manhood rising.<br /><br />Tim Gavin<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/raising-the-ax/
