Wooden Bowls and Wooden Spoons items ***** and mundane draw me into my shared history with my foremothers and theirs before them
The sharing of these simple things of chopping, stirring, baking snipping herbs and crafting soup smoked meat served on wooden platters such as might have been used a hundred years ago or ten thousand -
Wood has served us from the dawn of Humankind as fuel for the fire as shelter from the storm as living trees producing oxygen as things of beauty and inspiration, of poignancy and pathos
There is a warmth to wood absent in gold or sterling the warmth of life - still with us and once the meat is gone the platter will cleanse itself of impurities with the defenses remaining from the tree it once was protecting us yet again keeping us safe from the dangers outside of the circle of wood
With wood comes the danger of fire this danger I accept and brave the fire I will to have the wood with me to walk beneath and smell the perfume of the leaves to feel them crunch beneath my feet to see the earthworms retract as I toe them from the path
I want my life to end having given more than I have taken and giving trees brings me joy and makes the world a better place a place in which there will never be too few trees to be able to enjoy the feel of wooden bowls and wooden spoons where endless forests and healthy woods add to this miraculous planet of Life
Cori MacNaughton Apr 2002
I have read this poem in public on several occasions. This is the first time it appears in print.