On my walks in the woods not far from home

There is another beauty fallen across my path.

A tree before its time trying to outlast the

fifth nor’easter this season. It went down

The branches pulling on the root to go down

Now. I look around and see the carnage

Tree after tree toppled in place like pick-up-sticks.

It wasn’t that way when we started here, a forest

On its way to maturity. I didn’t know

How far it had to go. Softly one by one.

One hardly noticed a tree gone here

A tree gone there. But now in this season

The forest seems upended, the trees given

Up the ghost. They like us so connected

One to another like a huge family can’t

Sustain the losses of loved ones. And

Begin to die from the top down and lie

On the ground unburied unmemorialized

Waiting for another song to say hello in there.