Perhaps a meditation on past and present,
the grain of rounds leading to the stroke
that splits them clean. Is tracing the knots
and whorls like reading
a fortune of how they come
apart and how they cleave together?

Or perhaps a meditation on form
and function, the swing of the maul
both power and grace. You feel it,
rising and falling like your breath
in the cold, the slide of sinew and muscle
under your coat, the wood warming already your skin.

Or a meditation on enough and plenty,
on stocking and stoking the rack,
on tending a house until a sense of home
fills the air. The radiance of flame, different
than the blow of a furnace, releases all
the years of growth, like branches reaching skyward.

And how that means generations,
your father’s swing and motion now your own,
becoming our son’s as he carries
an armload inside and helps me lay the fire.
Which is all to say, a woodstove and its heat are simply
beauty in the end, and love.

I initially wrote this poem as a Father’s Day gift for my husband, Rob, and he later had a version of it tattooed on his leg along with an image of the log cabin in which he grew up. Todd O’Hare of Rolling Tattoo in Laramie did the ink. His work is fabulous (and I would know – he’s done about ten tattoos for Rob and one for me, so I get to enjoy his art every day.) Check him out here: https://www.rollingtattoo.com/todd-ohare.