Dead shark, shoved onto the sand. “It’s good he’s dead!” “Could
kill a man!”
The jagged jaws drip crimson
stain while we look on, in shock, in pain.
While nature knows no remedy for feeding frenzies in the sea, we watch,
wild-eyed and entertained in awe of teeth and torn remains.
We fear the beauty of the
deep: the sleek dark death of fatal sleep.
I’ve seen unnatural nature
rise into the blue of heaven skies, from darkened dirt of death decay into the
sweet sun of the day. Breathing silence, slowly grows and never thinking always knows that
life is sometimes given to the things that know not what they do. Years ascending, gaining girth, the monument
to mother earth is home to beetle, bird and vine with living limb and dying
tine.
Our red oak grows so many
years until we succumb to our fears of massive limbs so dead and dry that they
may fall down from the sky. Though round as at least eight of us and more than century tall,
our hasty thoughtless axe
Dead oak, dropped into the
dirt. “It’s good it’s gone!” “We could
get hurt!”
August, 2005
A few dead limbs does not a
dead tree make, especially one over five feet in diameter, over 100 feet tall,
with a healthy solid trunk..