I wondered what had toppled
that torso of sturdy oak,
crippled, hollow, beneath
a frosted cape of white,
recalled how high those
branches stretched, to sky,
to cloud, far from from
the humble earth beneath;
I was younger than the settling snow,
and thought things went forever.
Traipsing on, I conjured scenes
that showed it, mighty, felled
by a tempest’s wailing screams
of lightning, spark and smoke,
yet I knew the death was
thick and slow, a fog
that robs the night;
I wallowed in my memories,
the crooked bough that
snaked and weaved,
it seemed impossible to fold.
I thought of it rotting, steady,
pulling roots failing to hold,
in the saddest of my visions
as my skin crawled with the cold.
Fred Ostrovskis