A Brief History of Wood Splitting

A News Response Poem

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It wasn’t always numbers
though numbers tell it now. 
The whipsaw had teeth 
once in forests long ago,
two men pulling blade between them, 
push and haul, a tree falls. 
That's the first cut. 

Then came the pit, and a long saw
with angled teeth, one man 
on top pushing, bottom man working 
with gravity to pull the saw down 
on the cut stroke. The pit man 
goes down. That's the second cut.

Now the name has been stolen,
the sudden shift that cuts you 
is not wood but wealth or the hope 
of a future promised, then snatched away 
in a brutal game of up and down.

The pit man still waits below, 
though the pit is deeper now. 
He’s the one caught in the swing, 
the whiplash of boom and bust, 
and we’re left wondering how the world 
can rise and fall so fast on a word 
and who decides who holds the blade 
and who pulls the other way, 
who ends up with the final cut.

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Author’s Note: The term "whipsaw" originally described a type of saw used, often by two people, for cutting wood. While artifacts have been dated to Roman times, the earliest known use of the word date back to the mid-1500s. This tool's use, often in conjunction with a saw pit, involved a back-and-forth cutting motion. Over time, the term's meaning expanded, and by the 19th century, it was employed figuratively to describe situations where someone is metaphorically "cut" or harmed in two opposing ways. In modern finance, "whipsaw" refers to the market's tendency to change direction rapidly, resulting in losses for traders.

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