Scraps of wood

When the wild geese go honking on the wind escaping autumn's cold with all their raucous din, you can't beat fir in the stove or pine to take the chill away. I've got scraps of 2x4's burning there today -- wood I cut long ago to make blocks for my boys as big as apple crates. Just simple toys: pine boards varnished shiny on a frame of 2x4's -- I made twenty for a hundred boats and forts. My brother's children played with them after mine had grown. The pine has rotted away and now the scraps are home. I went out a while ago to watch the breeze erase their smoke. A flock of geese flying low and south inhaled my past with honking breath and left as fast as all the time that lay between those shiny forts and my autumn fire -- so quick . . . yet mostly sweet like the smell of pine.