Winters warmed

The log fire spits and hisses, biting back the winter’s chill that creeps in bitter-quickened cold beneath the outside door.

From where I work I glimpse the seat of glowing embers rise, bursting high their flames to grab the emptied content of my shovel once again and so I clear the chips upon my bench and shavings from the woodshop floor.

The cold retreats in haste from beyond the stovepipe where the flickering shadows lash and lick the walls and ceiling of my shop, and though my work warms up my breath, the ice now forms in frozen rivulets upon the sliding sash and windowpane.

The logs lie drying by the belly of the stove beyond my bench, and in the quiet of the evening there I work contented for awhile, disturbed no longer by the world now rested, wrested from the commerce of man’s working day.