Raising Stock

My fingers feel the ice on the board as I raise the lumber from the stock pile.
Like a matchstick against the snowy backdrop,
the board will form the core of someone's culminating dream.

Retiring to a comfort that is being born out of struggle.

The boards stand one by one, cut off from their kin,
skeleton stalks forgetting the animals that hunted beside them.

Cut and cut again; stamped and dried, we are actualized potential,
rising up to support the beam of the future.

There is nothing to feed, nothing to sell,
with each one stood, the forest takes its own
back to their dreams,
of living in the wind.

The boards sway in the rising structure.
The braces stay until the roof is on.

Like a field all ablaze, my mind is clear.
The cattle are grazing across my mental plain.
it is a good life, the kind that satisfies your bones.

Long stalks shortened in time,
forgotten until you feel your fingers burning.