Stumped

Denise and Henry share love and life together (yes
and there is music in their lives).

On a warm autumn morning, while they feasted
upon a slow Saturday brunch in the sunroom,
Henry yodeled in his deep Tyrolean bass
how about a few extra rows of corn or scallions
or snaps or squash or turnips in the spring?
and Denise in a earthy contralto rejoined,
yes indeed, I am all for more veggies but please
no more turnips I have had my fill for a lifetime.

Quicker than they could warble, levers and winches and wedges
and files and mauls and whetstones and chainsaws and spades
and picks and crosscuts and oil cans and six packs and axes,
Denise and Henry loaded the garden cart, hitched
onto the lawn tractor, motored out of the tool shed
onto the back lot, and rolled to a stop before a gargantuan stump
(oh for a fine rich day on the back lot,
a warm autumn morning to clear stumps and debris
from the garden, to lay out winter legumes)

Denise leaned on the stump and sang the old songs,
the songs of cycles of seasons and songs of the cycles
of years and songs of textures of autumn, songs of the back lot.

Henry hacked and strained and crosscut and levered
and filed and picked and spaded and mauled and shed his sweater
in the warmth of the day and wiped the sweat and grime
of his labor onto his tee shirt and leaned on the stump in the sun
and sipped his beer and flexed his muscles lest they stiffen
and pounded wedge after wedge into the gnarl.

Eh Henry, Denise poked her bony elbow into his side (there was wit
and music in her voice) as the fine rich day was nearing an end,
You are going to split that stump right down the middle? Eh?

Henry sat on his stump to catch his breath and sip another beer.
Next time more wedges and a bigger maul,
for now let us call it a day.

In the spring there were corn and scallions and snaps and squash
in the garden and a spray-painted sign on the stump,
whoever shall pull the wedges out of this stump,
be he a man or be she a woman, upon that person
shall we confer a quarter cord of gnarled firewood
and a half-bushel of turnips.

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© George Miller 2005