Forest Redwood

 

Colour clogs- gets dark-
Breathing leafs gasp
Their last
And the body bark
Sheds like pealing pear.
My tree! broad once, tall once- Around it, weather-beaten and beaten By flayed arms, a ring of ash and Decayed debris scatter-

Nebulous haze,
Bringing on an eternal gauze.
Buried in the mound
Of its own mortal tissue,
Like a cornice- or like a rising tied
That reaches into the air with
Thickness and stench-
Silencing the howling
Wind through the ashen hair of the Almost bare Redwood tree.
Into the the invisible the plume descends- Poison extending below the soil- Uprooting, poison uprooting
My trunk, my core-
Redwood, Redwood.

An absence in the flicker of finality,
Not in pain or chaos,
But in audience- because
The shedding of leaves is a normality- Isnt it? All trees lose a part of themselves In winter. But this slow dying

Happens below the eyeline, even In sight of sun.