In Muir Woods.(Poem)

 
Last night, a giant redwood fell 
either from old age, disease, or 
"sometimes they just give up," the ranger said. 
 
Listen, I was in the woods, I 
heard it too, like my own death 
falling inside me. 
 
Here in the last of the old growth forests 
where some trees are still virginal, 
some older than Moses, 
 
I thought, then, of you. You are not the one 
dying, you said to me, 
and I quoted to you from Montaigne 
 
that death was not a proper object of fear 
but only the end of life. 
What is a proper object of fear, you asked, 
 
and I said death of the heart. 
But life, you said, was 
everything. And you were in love 
 
with that beautiful lie. 
 
Sometimes these trees send out …