Two trees.(Poem)

 
TWO TREES 
 
   i. What We Hear 
 
   There is a tree falling in our back lot, 
   a willow, gigantic and scarred, with torn limbs 
   hanging at oblique angles, its base a tangle 
   of vines and wild rose. It is falling slowly, 
   imperceptibly, except for the daily 
   increase in its lean: gravity asserting 
   dominion over inertia--which is 
   to say, time has overtaken it. 
   As the tree falls, it makes no sound except 
   for the rasping of branches that graze one another 
   in the breezes. Each storm that blows hard foretells 
   demise, but this morning, despite the gale 
   winds of last night and the lashing rain, there it 
   is, at odds with the rest of the angular woods: 
   obdurate, proud, inexorable, old--older 
   by a day. When it falls at last, 
   completing the half-arc of its life, we will 
   hear it in the hollows of the heart. 
 
   ii. What Comes After 
 
   Years ago another tree, a willow larger than the one in the far 
   field, fell in a whirlwind on a hot summer night. Its crash 
   brought us out into the wild air and where the tree had been was a 
   darkness we had never seen before, a gap through which no star 
  ...