The Lumberjack Lesson

Hey You Men,

Let’s fell a tree! Let’s use an axe. Now, we set the axe before us, and we are too weak to wield it.

But yet, it is a dire thing. We must drop the tree over the chasm so the men, women and children can cross to safety.

The dream has been ours for some time. Yet we have never been strong enough.

Through the mud, in the darkness, up in the high country among the burnt snags, we train. We add blood to the ground. And we train.

And then at dawn with the eastern sky so wild, we take the axe which was the dream we had in the beginning, but a dream with no muscle behind it, and like a wet sliver the great tree crosses the canyon. And so do the ones we love.