Dappled Light

My sister had fixed slaw-dogs for lunch one day. I hadn't had one in years, so I bought some good hot-dogs (Nathans) and a bag of slaw. Especially good topped with kimchi. Beautiful day, intensely blue, so I drove into town the back way, admiring the light and the color; the bluffs of Kentucky, across the river, were spectacular. Failed in my search for a three-pound hammer head among the junk shops, but I refuse to pay thirty dollars for a new hammer. The Chestnut oak splits so easily, as expected, that I can split it on my knees with a hatchet and the smaller hammer, saving my back. I do need to make a handle for a lovely, unused, six pound splitting-maul head that I picked up for two dollars. B swears by Black Gum for handles because the grain is so convoluted that they never break. Never is relative, city friends break handles trying to be helpful. I have another maul, with a fiberglass handle, given to me by someone, but it needs to sharpened, which means several hours with a file because I don't want to lose the temper. The pub was quiet, after the lunch rush, and there was a guy I knew sitting at the bar, Michael, a graphic designer, who's been stripping copper and other salable stuff from a building a friend of his bought in Ashland. He's making very good money and bought me a beer, we talked about taking buildings apart. I love salvage. I'd as rather take something apart as build another something. When you take something apart, you see the whole process in reverse. Vitruvius, in De Architectura, lays it all out, the physical part of things, then the next year, Poggio found Lucretius. Which opened that whole debate, the immortal soul, Dante, the circles of hell. Coming back in the dappled pools of light were glowing. And the leaves. I knew going out that we were having a major leaf-event day. The driveway is inches deep in them. On Mackletree, through the forest, you can't see the edges of the road. Vehicles make rooster-tails. They pour out of the beds of pickup trucks. They carpet the terrain. They make walking difficult because you can't see the ground. I wonder how many pounds per acre. I make a rough calculation, based on questionable data, and it's a great many tons. Worms and nematodes process that, the dust of volcanos, bat shit, the bones of the dead, and leaves, into tomorrow's topsoil. Where do you think that air came from? Chemical reaction? Best guess, you let the dust settle, sift the fines, bury a dead herring for every ear of corn.