The tender tumbling failure of the fallen
tree, immovable, silent, roots exposed
like insides, like a lifted skirt.
A surrender of the reaching for sky,
now earthbound, rotting. Yet a death
bed offering of its body for the joy
of young greens that sing along
its split limbs, for the urgency
of ants and beetles that shelter
under its jumble of coffee colored
leaves and blackening bark. How
can a living thing give up so easily
its aliveness? Why doesn’t it dig in deeper,
lean into oncoming winds, dodge summer
lightning? I am doing everything I can
to not die, and yet I too am the deadening
body, the darkening daylight, the reluctant
wanderer. Walking through the forest,
I see the live and dead things in accord,
there is not one without the other.
Here, the dead are not ashamed to be dead.
Jackdaw Review, October 2025