R.T. Smith
Wresting the woodstove from under the flue,
the chimney sweep who’s never heard of William Blake
puts his shoulder to the iron box heavy as a safe
and says he’s happy I don’t use greenwood or pine.
“You know, if it’s not a pleasure to cut, it’s not fit
to burn,” he laughs, and I’m glad to share the joke
of his T-shirt printed like a black tie and tux,
because I once wore such a mock-formal outfit
to a high school dance. His vacuum hose snakes out
long as a Tarzan python, and he runs his brushes
up the tunnel using a mirror to spot creosote traces
he needs to scour. For an hour his ladder rattled
on the roof, but now he’s touching up and can talk.
“You know, creosote comes at us from the Greek
and means saving flesh, which is because
the gooey residue distilled from wood tar
acts as antiseptic, but it can bring your house down
in a flash if you don’t keep it scraped. You know,
folks used to push a cedar down the chimney mouth
and rub it around to ream the combustibles out,
but sometimes the sap would cling to the bricks
and one fine October night, you know, they’d stoke
the stove too high and whoosh, nothing left of home
but smoke and embers. Disaster can happen
as you sleep, you know it’s a fact.” In a green mask
and goggles, he’s like the prom date from outer space
and says the Almanac promises a stormy winter,
and because he lives on the lean north slope
of Sugar Hill and gets the hardest weather, he dropped
six oaks last year and sawed them up. He’s ready,
but says I need to watch my baffle and damper.
“They’re starting to warp, which means you’re
working hot, you know. If you get a buckle here,
call a car welder to solder it back. You know
there’s nothing worse than a crack where sparks
can travel.” A hundred bucks, and he cleans up
so nobody would know he was here. “Orion
will swim up soon, you know, and say, November,
so you want to be ready and not accident-prone,”
and when I nod and hand him the check, he bows
like Fred Astaire and says, “Here’s my business
card: Cinders. Call early next year, and remember:
no green wood. The honest-to-God Apocalypse
will be soon enough for me to see a fatal blaze,
you know, so you take care. When the world is over
we’ll all be fine as ash. We’ll be grit and memory
looking for the final light. No need for anybody
to rush it, you know,” reminding me it’s better to burn
only what’s seasoned and keep a closer watch.
Loaded up, washed and dapper in his stovepipe hat,
he’s ready to roll but takes a minute to say,
“You know, protecting homes by swabbing hearths
is an important dying art,” and all I can answer
as I shake his hand is, “Yes, I know.”
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