Firewood
Chana Bloch

When you sawed a branch from the pine tree
the white sky submerged us,
a clear fluid without memory,
and I kept missing it, kept going out to look
as the tongue returns
to the space between two teeth.

Put it back! I said, but the branch
was already a pile of logs, wrist-thin,,
paler inside than my child’s face.
One evening’s wood.

The luxury of that low branch hanging down!
We had to duck every time to get past,
it blocked out the sun,
nothing but pine needles grew under it.

In the fire I see our own faces
losing their shape.
There’s no way to change
without touching
the space at the center of everything.