The man he took an axe into the woods. He used this, the axe, to cut down clouds, to stuff them in his ears so that he didn't have to listen anymore. He used this, his axe, in these the woods, to cut down the trees and to make for himself a coffin, a box that his hands and arms and legs and feet can go into-for when he sleeps. And the woods in their silence and the ground in its flooring watched the man stuff up his ears and cut down his box and made of itself, and the man and the axe and the woods, a grave.
The Man He Took an Axe into the Woods [ 22 ]
The man he took an axe into the woods. There was a quiet. Then there was a noise. The noise was thunder. The quiet was rain. The lightning that cracked, it cracked open the handle of the axe, spit sparks off the blade of the axe, burned the face from the man standing in the rain listening to the thunder with ears turned clean away. The woods in a thunderstorm, lighting up the man. The axe an arm to the clouds. The gray in the woods with the man and the axe and the leftover rumble of forgotten faces and humming static.
The Man He Took an Axe into the Woods [ 23 ]
The man he took an axe into the woods and found a river. The man he took an axe into the river and found a stone. The man he took an axe into the stone and found the heart of a woman he had left and forgotten before, when he was alive, when he was still. The man turned from the stone. The man turned from the river. The man turned from the woods. The man turned from the axe and himself, walking away, going somewhere that isn't and will never be and wasn't home.