Dale's Story

It was war in the forest, on the forest.Tough young men, made of a wood harder than most. The grinding of motorized, metal teeth; a sharp crack and the warning cry:"Tim-berrr---" The loud lash of tons of tree falling on the sensitive ears of the earth. It is loggin' or euphemistically called: harvesting lumber. Beams and studs delicately marred by red tallies of human blood.
It is a dangerous job. The trees die, so do many men; like war, everyone wounded; some on the hills and some in town. Hard, hard work; long days and never enough money. The hills snuff the fragile and the unlucky, the slow and the disrespectful. Spilling their golden cup of life.
It was a freak accident he survived. A log slipped out of the choke chain and rolled off the pile. Perhaps it was the cursed mud, the muck that with every step took it's toll from that day's purse. That tied his boots together; he slipped. The log fell and he fell and death tapped him on the neck and said: "What comes around, goes around." Tapped there, on the nape a man wakes and watches the slow, sure and dutiful crushing, from foot to face; gravel crunching under truck wheels; of bones snapping and crackling into powder.
But this life is a trick. And sometimes that which harmed you, that which made you late and tired, made you slip, may help you. That which you cursed a hundred times on rainy days, at which you spat venom and words, can become a blessing.
"It was the mud that saved my life," the old, gaunt man told me. "If it weren't for the mud, I woulda died." The pain there, in his sunken, half-blind eyes, nodded with a gleeful grin; the pain that dances with him every day, insisting on yet another spin.
An Angel came and carried him away; plucked him off that wet mountain side. A noisy machine filled with men; frantic men that worried his body away from the authoritative commands of the neck tapper. And doctors and hospital beds did their part.
I cried. With fumbling fingers I rolled a cigarette, pausing to wipe the tears from my eyes; unable to tell him how sorry I felt. I tried. Each try overruled by the terror I saw in his past and with each seeing, another wave of remorse rolled over my body. Lighting the cigarette gave me pause to tell him how sorry I felt that that happened and that that still crushes him.

Refusing to Leave

Refusing to leave, this poem was extracted from the basement by a Swat team, heavily gassed and tazed into submission:

The green cheeks on the tart apple tree
are showing a blush of red
as if
the grinning tree next door
said

Psst! I'm feeling so elated
that we two pollinated