Wooden Bowl

"Two dollars" in pencil on the Mohegan Trail
For a wooden bowl, one fluid, sculpted curve of 
Something hard (maple or birch or ash, perhaps).
My grandmother nicked and scraped it over years
With the steel vegetable chopper her grandfather
Fashioned from a spade. 
She scraped, scraped, scraped, scraped, scraped
Maine into soups, stews. "Two dollars" in pencil, clear
After twenty years" use and seventeen in a 
Cardboard box under crumpled bits of newspaper
Coated yet with the tallow of broiled steaks and chops.
My grandmother kept the bowl near the gas stove
With its broiler, well, four burners, two ovens.
That was her mother"s stove, cast iron, still working
Somewhere even now.  They were proud of it.
There is nothing like a well-seasoned gas stove.
I smell ancient dinners in the newspaper.
Then I press the paper into a loose ball, toss 
   It aside,
And put in twelve new Macintosh apples,
Grown local.

Autumn Fire

Birch and maple fires smolder
Into soot that smells of dusty leather,
A cracked binding, loose threads, brown glue.
Rain smoldering the fire glistens first
On the scraps of leaf leather, skin
Of summer, peeling, fading, blowing in
The cool darkness.  There:  a family 
Of deer are watching you:  Go, go,
Return indoors, 
  their eyes insist.
You go, though there is no fire there,
No birch, no maple.