Still good for splitting
bolts into quarters; tong lift to
cradle, that winsome

whine and crackle. Pine:
splitting whorls challenging as a
mild tooth ache, but

they do offer up
enough heat to bother. Oak,
birch and maple, green

as an unripened
banana, the easiest
to split. Under the

aegis of a green
and white pole shed I bury
my prow into the

wave of another
ho hum winter day, sky the
color of a stray

kitten; temp, sweatshirt
and glove worthy; radio
softly keening out

a better past, and
the echo of Jim’s question -
What do rich folks do

Ron Jevaltas is a retired educator/carpenter and long time resident of rural central Wisconsin. He considers himself a phenological poet. He has written over 1,500 poems over the past 60 years; a fraction of those appeared in his first book of poetry, Lampyridae, which was published in September.