Little board sliver slithers soft forked maple fangs into the palm of my hand.
It bit me. This thing I am ripping. Stripping.
Nibbling no more than an eighth an inch a pass.
Snake maple.
Spider poplar.
Rabid dog mahogany.
Cherry red in the tooth.
Knotty walnut.
Creamy peanut butter pine
with rotten streaks of jelly.
Perched like an eagle on top of a ski hill.
Who would not have thought.
Eight hundred miles of mountains.
Would lead to here.
This dry little white one.
No more than a hill. Still.
Paid minimum wage to watch kids climb like boomerangs
come twirling throwing snow back to be whipped again.
Scarves hiding grins.
Nobody wins.
Nobody really has a gender.
Or an agenda.
Or anything better to do. Clearly.
Just surprised still at gravity.
Bolting fiberglass boards to boots.
Amused. When mountains for two months
leads to a mountain for two months.
As if it ever could have happened.
Any other way.
And still been mine.
Poison ivy, not yet out in leaves, has still broken out on me.
Razed mountains on contaminated wrists and hands.
Just a touch or two, from touching black-coarse-hair-vines gripping pines.
The sweetgums the landowner hates. The fallen colors her husband favors.
And I, bills to pay, and no good not green place to hide.
The destiny of life to be buried in, under, beneath other heavy life.
Weighted with the weight of water. Heavily doused by a rain
dry creek bed awake again sort of winter.
To taunt us back into another dry summer.
Itching beneath cracked leather gloves already,
cracked burnt uprising textured leather hands are steady.
At least for now, they are steady. And the twisted green tips
on the ends of poisoned twiggy whips, are not yet out.
But ready.
Writer Actor Farmer 