CIRQUE
Gene Ervine
Mother’s Kindling She remembers the harmony of the two-man crosscut, the smell of the cedar and ferns, when shake blocks cracked and fell from those ancient cedar slabs in the sunlit woods. And she remembers the sound of the maul strikes sharp on the steel wedges, that harsh quick bell, the sizzle of splitting wood the tan water welling out. The vine maple club rose and fell, rose and fell, striking the froe splitting taper shakes. She’d flip the block, And strike the froe. Slowly the roof grew. Fifty four years later, butts rotted, she splits those shakes again––Kindling. Warmed by that work, split, snapped and stacked. Knowing a different kind of ache now, after those blows of hope and home. . . She moves on remembering when her froe and cedar sang. Above the flaming newspaper her kindling starts and crackles.
Brooks Range
Dale Slaughter
Matthew Ryan Evans
Fish Lake at Top of the World We gathered on the dock for a photo op before a hike out to the hot springs at White Swan.
On cue a moose dipped a sharpened hoof in the frigid lake at the far end where a full-needled fir lay submerged like a drowned shadow of the deadfall we fished from and kept entering and swam with confidence we could not have expected and pushed a powerful bow wave so earnest it was the only disturbance antlers passing like a split mast or still wings through the cool air breath coming untroubled a rich column of cleaved steam from a perfect furnace. Its heart was the size of a child. Before it reached the far shore the top of a tall balsam exploded in the form of an actual eagle which beat wings wide as a driveway just once to find its prehistoric glide right to left at a predatory angle and stood frozen on the surface outstretched and suspended long enough to taunt us to flaunt a fish more beautiful and complete than any we had ever seen which it surfed for a moment and carried away. It was obvious all three had discussed this and agreed
Northern White Cedar Bark
Lucy Tyrrell
they’re leaving, let’s change them.