Windthrow

Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash

I’m always sad when when I pass these enormous uprooted trees, when upright beauty succombs to a season’s relentless storm. But as God would have it, one death can be the salvation of many, and if you look hard in the shadows of these topplings, new life is finding a home. Happy Easter.

Windthrow 

We paddle our grief   
past

and sigh at the savagery
of tree toppling

the uproot
from primordial soil 

cloud blather,
breeze brush

perpetual rinse 
and reflection

rings can’t count 
such loss—

when a ruthless gust 
razes the oak’s boast

in its cradled nest,
uttered leaves, branch-dance

the peak of gallantry 
rend in the unearthing 

of lattice, when 
brokenness mines 

a root labyrinthe 
uncloaked

as miry temple 
whose beneath 

teems with the living,
the vulnerable—

when it forgets 
its reflection

in its plunge  
to humble sanctum—

as resurrected umbra,
life for the fallen.