near Stockholm Wisconsin for 37 years, working and making a living, book-by-book—each book a leap in the same direction, but always into territory new and unknown, propelled by the belief that if I knew where I was going there would be no point going there—books printed by hand from metal type and wood harvested from these twenty-seven acres of Wisconsin woods. 

In recent years all the black ash trees in our valley have died, and I’ve watched them die: the emerald ash borers eating their way through the sapwood around and around, each tree throwing out desperate shoots until water could no longer reach their leaves, the borers leaving behind trails that brought to mind the tribal scarring found in the National Geographic magazines of my youth. 

I have been harvesting these trees, sawing some into lumber and the rest fire wood, with one exception: far up the trunk of the largest tree was a fork, and I saved it—a 7-foot-long section now installed along Foster Road where the tree once stood—inverted upside down with the fork suggesting legs and another section of the trunk installed on top to suggest shoulders and protect it’s end grain from the elements, all anchored by four-foot-deep cement footings. Before applying multiple coats of varnish I used a brayer and inked up the surface with a darker shade of brown, making the beautiful, deadly trails of the insects more visible. 

In recent years I have struggled with a feeling of waning relevance. A new constellation of stars has risen from the brackish waters of this bookish sea and I wonder if, finally, Body of Black Ash might represent art for art’s sake: it brings no measurable attention, nor money, but it will stand where it stands when I am no longer…