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MAGNIFICENT

The massive corpse of a tree,

its trunk fifteen feet long, 

twenty inches diameter,

laying on the grass, a body

left unburied.          A man,

orange hat and vest,

his loud tap-knocking diesel pickup

towing his mobile sawmill, pulls levers.

Tongs grasp and raise the massive log

to slide it on a bed of rollers

hold it fast as the blade

cuts it into boards. His boots stand

in half a foot of sawdust.

The cut boards

rest off to the side, marked

thirty to three hundred dollars.

It is too late to ask

why it was felled,

but there before us now,

we praise its inner swirls and colors,

its personal diary read aloud,

revealing its hundred-year-old

secrets, leaving us

reverently silent.