Fire When Ready

A buddy from the city tells a most amusing story,

About his quest to buy some firewood.

He’d hunted hill and dale. A seasoned hardwood was his quarry.

For enthalpy this has the higher good.

He found a fellow selling just such wood beside the highway.

Right as you leave the village going west,

His wood all stacked and covered so’s to keep it in a dry way.

He proudly vowed that his wood was the best.

My buddy, being the urban sort, got straight to talking turkey,

And asked what was the damage for a cord.

He found that such directness renders conversations murky,

As his question then was all but ignored.

The fellow doing the selling started asking him the questions.

Did he know how to build a proper stack?

My pal allowed how he would accept the man’s suggestion,

For clearly he could see the fellow’s knack.

The wood was piled tightly as a dry stone wall in Britain.

And covered o’er with tin to shed the rain.

“You keep ‘em dry, they’ll keep you just as cozy as a kitten.

Now tell me, how’s the access in your lane?

My buddy told the fellow that the laneway in was decent,

With room to turn a pick-up truck around.

He said the load of gravel that he’d spread was highly recent.

That’s sort of how the banter there unwound.

He was asked about the nature of the shelter there afforded,

To shield the beech and maple, oak and ash.

My friend began to wonder, were his answers being recorded?

As the fellow said all deals are strictly cash.

My friend began to think, this is akin to adoption.

Perhaps he’d like to check my fireplace…

Be sure his wood is happy with its new home as its option,

Before it goes on to that higher place.

But finally the deal was struck. A figure was agreed on.

The wood would be delivered one week hence.

A parchment and a pen produced that both of them might bleed on,

Then the two of them shook hands like proper gents.

As per the plan the logs were left unloaded in the laneway,

Upon appointed date and time agreed.

A rent-a-runt from Ray’s Place I averred the only sane way,

To get that much wood stacked, but did he heed?

He carried every log himself uphill one hundred paces,

And stacked them up against the basement wall,

Till all the cords were high and dry, and sporting smiling faces.

These logs were his new babies, one and all.

He told me when you buy a load of fire logs from Lorne,

You’re not just buying common winter fuel.

A certain onus is attached to which the buyer’s sworn,

For each log’s like a sacred “family jewel”.