Up until a few months ago I had no chainsaw.
I still cut wood.

Sawed posts and beams to split into rails,
with a rusted, chipped red bow saw
and an arsenal of ax heads on cracked handles.

I even cut down a few trees that were huge to me. Literally towering.
And others might call them mid-sized to small.

No heavy machinery whatsoever and always alone.

I sought out shorter, easier obstacles to level,
seeking trees growing right on top of one another,
and trunks wilting bark with huge gaping rotted out spots.

I like to think the trees that need it were destined, in short time,
to fall already, but that thinking is flawed. Every living,
dying tree is promised this.

But not to be drug from the forest,
nailed into a structure, cut to length and piled for fire,
to break apart, disappear, in a location of my desire.

A tree aspires for the forest floor,
right where it dug and drank before,
every day of its rooted existence,
and I have to be okay with taking it.

And I always am.