Tree O For Mac

Red and black checkered mackinaw
  Early Morning , moving swiftly
through the dense and damply wooded
trail;
Soundless, sockless, sneakers grey, worn,
Matching the "shop tan" contours of his thick, muscled thighs;
Stray beams of forest light on his face,
revealing the angular distinctions,
and the molar depression where pipe
clamps firmly into jaw.
His hair is straight, and the near the
middle parted
Like that picture of grandfather, hanging
in the hall,
except for the shock that drops down now
across his forehead,
as he suddenly stops short, ear to dawn
and the sound of glistening stillness.

***

Evening dark and nestled in the lodge,
a wooden match is struck.
Instant flare of suspension and is gone,
Thumb flicked past right ear and hunching
shoulder.
The still warm, burnished countours of his
unlit pipe, finger cradled, while
we distracted, are on this diversion.
Three, four more matches come and go
before the light connects,
and through the cool nights piney air,
He speaks to us in tones uniquely Mac:
Clear, deliberate, resonating, moving,
Like the articulated rhythm of that brook
on Mount Chocurua,
In streams, persuading, arresting, teasing,
igniting:
Eyes deep welled, he fires the instant mood
like a shot off a shovel
"Dunker, I want that log pile cleared by morning."
And just as quickly downshifts to appraise
Charlie Horners wild new hiking proposal:
"Oh, really.............that would be nice."
While a hint of flint humor ticks the corner of his eye.

***

It is October and the autumn sun dapples the
farmhouse knoll,
and fans out to expose the wide range of the
Sandwich mountains:
Whiteface at one end, where honest legend
says he ran its full trail length, one
evening after summer;
That he shouldered up a lean to roof made of
metal, so's to better hear the nights
falling rain.
We are picknicking here on the hillside,
The sun's savor extended by the warmth and
kindle of a couple's Love,
Tested and honed to a mellow fullness in these later years,
And reflected now, for us, in the beaming faces
of our children.

Tim Heffernan
August 28, 1999

In loving memory of Mac MacGregor