The man splitting wood in the daybreak <br />looks strong, as though, if one weakened, <br />one could turn to him and he would help. <br />Gus Newland was strong. When he split wood <br />he struck hard, flashing the bright steel <br />through the air so hard the hard maple <br />leapt apart, as it's feared marriages will do <br />in countries reluctant to permit divorce, <br />and even willow, which, though stacked <br />to dry a full year, on being split <br />actually weeps—totem wood, therefore, <br />to the married-until-death—sunders <br />with many little lip-wetting gasp-noises. <br />But Gus is dead. We could turn to our fathers, <br />but they help us only by the unperplexed <br />looking-back of the numerals cut into headstones. <br />Or to our mothers, whose love, so devastated, <br />can't, even in spring, break through the hard earth. <br />Our spouses weaken at the same rate we do. <br />We have to hold our children up to lean on them. <br />Everyone who could help goes or hasn't arrived. <br />What about the man splitting wood in the daybreak, <br />who looked strong? That was years ago. That was me.<br /><br />Galway Kinnell<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-man-splitting-wood-in-the-daybreak/
