Today, Mother told me the whole story:
how he died on Valentine’s Day
the year after she married.
The doctor warned him years before
that his heart needed to mend.
But he could not change his ways –
a shepherd by trade and nature.
So when the timber pile ran low, he took
the saw from the nail behind the door
and crossed the field to the plantation,
where he worked all day in the bitter cold.
At dusk he carried armfuls of beech and ash
and stacked them near the water-barrel
at the gable end, his head bent
against the black east wind.
It was too much for him.
From: Forget the Lake
