Recollections of a Lumberjack
The glint of twilight interlacing through those snow-laden thickets of deciduous pine,
Seemed to dispense a note of time to his shivering arms and a wavering mind
After he finished wiping an exuding countenance and reposed for a wheezy breath,
the old lumberjack from North, spared a thought for his life - that was far from kind
The warmth from his saw’s blade seemed to have loosely anchored his fleeting soul,
in an unforgiving world, where the unforgiving elements often catechized his existence
And bygone days of a long and harsh winter sought answers from his feeble bones,
whose love it could have been, that endowed him with such indomitable persistence?
It was forty summers ago that he had walked the aisle with her – the love of his life,
touched by life’s transiency, he recalls the storms they weathered, holding hand in hand
His ailing consort sat by that window and watched the Blue Jays tweet on the maple branch,
he could still feel the beat of her heart, when his squamous fingers touch his wedding band
Her winsome smile would enable him to forget the perils of a life mired in quotidian routine,
that empty cot by the fireplace, now reminds him of those sanguine dreams she used to sell
Of that plaintive night, that followed thereafter, which he always regrets to have even survived,
for it told him again that she lives no more and he would shed a tear with every log he fell
Her thoughts were his strength, her arms gave him solace and she meant the world to him,
her disposition was a thing of beauty, which enshrined their joy and kept melancholy away
And now he cares for no recompense; he is old and alone, yet on terms with the events of life,
then he walks in to oblivion, midst the orange sunset; for that was enough nostalgia for the day.