The Great Oak’s Flesh

The wind had broken tide,
blown many ashore and left many a wreck,
Wafted between sleepless cityscapes, teeming with sprightly greens,
Culling their anxious whispers, and sowing every last breath into distant tundra

It crept up each mountaintop, bellowed through every valley, and
trounced all corners of this Earth
until it found its way into the sheltering forest

There an oak bore great suffering,
To once have been unmoving and now to writhe with the fickleness of age,
its ancient limbs, contorted under their own weight,
testify to the persistence of memory,
and lie mournfully beneath the umbrage of greener canopies

The wind was a force of nature, and with natural pursuits,
it challenged and arranged the destruction
of all insoluble problems

In its thickness, its density, its grace,
the tree rendered itself a monument
A lifetime of markings and gashes impressed upon its powerful frame
presented an impossibility to onlookers,
as its sturdiness appeared resolute

Yet concealed just beneath the ground were legs withered by age,
and in all of its greatness, the tree lacked the rootage to stand.

The wind flew between the great oak’s flesh,
Its whistle countervailed by a tentative cry
as it tore through sinew and hollowed bone,
And yearning for its once mighty grasp of soil,
the oak tenderly released from an old friend’s embrace
cracking, and cracking until it finally fell,
Settling softly into the stillness of the forest floor