Burning

Cold cold cold and cold. I pause beside

The shed of split, stacked wood to peer

At stars and shiver in the steel dirge

A winter’s night sings out. Stars burn

But in their nuclear, endless space

Are cold beyond imagining.

As I live and breathe, I burn warmly yet

Am cold and must tote these sticks all

Winter long to stay even tolerably warm.

To stand and stare and feel this frozen scintilla

Of camaraderie bestows strange peace.

A nerve in my shoulder moans. My burden gains.

Come morning, I prod the ashes:

Disappearance is a further kinship.

Across galaxies, time flames. I yearn.

Baron Wormser was Maine’s poet laureate from 2000 to 2006. His latest book is “The Road Washes Out in Spring,” a memoir of life in the woods of western Maine.