When you worked as a forester once, once 

another who worked alongside you lost 

a hand, and it fell to you—the one 

who had to “tie it up.” Perhaps that’s why 

Washington’s wilderness rarely fills your poetry. 

Discretion’s chainsaw clear-cuts what is most costly. 

Then Leslie weighed in with her sweet expertise 

on how a logger’s life ought not be idealized,

and how even the saw allows for the trees

it's just about to bring down, eliminated

from Alaskan landscape. This koan is like bait: 

hooked, I contemplate destruction’s subtle sizes. 

The changes and chances of this mortal life 

are cries to call the soul back home again. 

At least I like the way that sounds, even if 

the little tree house of the body is all 

we really know, wounds and pine knots, as squalls 

pound the limbs in which the bare, beamed room is contained. 

Yesterday a friend’s mother paid a visit 

to our church, and by the creed we developed 

a partnership: bulletin between our heads. 

For her, it was possibly (why pretend?) 

a way forward, readying for the end. 

“Begotten,” as I heard her say, “and not made up.”