I like the process; boring into wood

By hand, the blade-sharp drill-bit piercing good

And deep, then pulling out so that the sap

Drips sweetly down the bark. Then every tap

Gets tapped in, buckets all hung tree by tree

Then waiting day by chilly day to see

And listen for the sap-fall drop by drop.

Some days it seems like it will never stop,

Some days you check, and all is hard as hail,

The tree’s blood marbled, frozen in its pail,

Still and unliving. Some days they are full,

As fruit that swells towards our planet’s pull,

With water, moving clear and light as thought,

Bearing within a sweetness tasted not

Until the fire distill it. Sparks will fly

All night through smoke that pours into a sky

Where all the stars shine clearly. Reading,

Sipping a whiskey, skimming the sap, feeding

The flames with seasoned pine, hearing the rhyme

That silence makes with silence, feeling time

Move slowly, patience lets you feel its firm

Insistent hand, which brings all things to term.

But as I checked the buckets yesterday,

As sun shone slant-wise towards a Saturday,

I found a deer-mouse drowned, afloat inside,

Compassed within the circle of that tide.

However it came, the wall’s aluminum

Kept it from climbing out to escape its doom.

I thought about what it must have been like:

Its panic as its heart began to spike,

The elfin muscles burning, worked to final

Exhaustion in its most essential, primal

Task, with its pointed nose kept quivering

Above the veil of water, shivering,

Tail arched below the minute, plashing waves,

Each ripple smothering even as it laves.

One cannot understand that sheer sensation,

Unreasoned hope and fear in combination,

But without knowledge, thought, or consciousness,

The neural paths alight with weariness.

Its body then is one entire groan,

As it attempts, but vainly, to postpone

Its own inevitable, black unmaking

From which there is no rebirth or awaking.

Its total animality distilled

From what is living into what is killed,

From energy to mere material,

Motion departed, flesh finds release

Into its deformation and decease.

It nearly seemed some thing within the tree

That dwelt where I could not confirm or see

Demanded blindly life for taken life,

And felt my drill as I might feel a knife

And brought about again these mortal changes;

Since Earth’s whole household thrives on such exchanges.