Beautiful poem, Et. Reminded me of my university days studying such stuff for English Lit. Here's an interesting story for y'all in return for the poem, which eased me through the man-flu I am currently suffering through as well.

While I was still employed (yeah, now unemployed (just quit my job) and not worried one iota about it) I spoke with a man from Newfoundland (Canadian east coast). He told me how his "faddar" was able to build a wooden fishing boat out of hand sawn wood and using no sealant, was able to use it for years without leaks. Now, if I were a fisherman you might tink I was tellin' you a whopper of a tale but I'm not, what I am about to tell you are the facts as I heard them even though my ears are failing my worldly desires.

if you were to go to Home Depot or Rona or Windsor Plywood or any other dealers in wood, to attempt such a thing as to build a boat and use no sealant and expect it to float leak-free would be foolhardy, and y'all know that instinctively. So what did this Neufie's faddar know that we don't know. Was it magic? Did he swear some piece of his soul to Neptune to keep his soul live long enough to return to land each time he went out to sea to earn a decent living? Did he use some kind of flotation inside the boat, like they do with a canoe when it shoots strong rapids? Did he set his beautiful daughter adrift with a bottle of screech into a storm as a sacrifice to the storm gods that they might ease their tempers while he was asea?

Neither of these he did, no...neither of these he did. I'll tell you what he did I will but you won't believe it when you hear it because it's so simple that in these here complex times with all this high technology we use to force issues that shouldn't be forced, sometimes hearin' something simple is hard to hear." T'was the moon", he said to me, "t'was by the moon his faddar used to beat the sea". "The moon?", I asked, whaddya mean "the moon?"

Well, this Neufie, he looked down at me, he was taller by a hand than I, he looked down at me and he says, "You haerd me, my faddar used the moon when he harvasted his wood...from his own land he did". "He waited, you see, he waited fer the moon to be full in its glory, than he went out and cut the trees down".

"But how?", I asked, "What difference does that make, why the full moon, how does the moon affect whether wood seals or doesn't seal?" "Did he do a pagan dance around each tree, I know you Neufies can do some strange things once you had enough screech...did a dryad answer his to request to guarantee good wood?"

Nope, wasn't that, it was by the pull of the full moon that he cut the wood. You see, when the moon is full, it pulls haerder on the earth and the trees feel the pull just the same. The pull from the full moon brings up all the sap from the roots and takes it into the wood above. So when my faddar cut the trees down, the wood inside was full of sap, and when my faddar built his boats, he worked the wood while it was green, fresh cut. He fit the bards tight togedder, as tight as he could. And you know, he never had a problem I haerd of while I knew him. In fact, he left one boat on the beach for a few years, untouched, and even after that time, it floated with no leaks"

There you have it, Et, a story about something I haerd while working up north. True? I dunno but to my high tech senses, it sounds logical and would probably work. Oddly, the pull of the moon does seem to get my sap going.

Robert (Told a)N(other story) Pruden