Ash

An Ash tree tumbled down last winter, it is only a wooden effigy now, branched still, limbs askew, leftover as a lingering image of one hour of violence. It was a head-storm, it got into the marrow of things, wolf-winds tore at its canopy, eclectic daggers struck its roots. Fire felled - it smoked for hours, bark scored and etched with ashes. We did not see this, the tempest shuttered our minds, yet we heard the rebounding crash, and the longer shudder. In the morning, mother took her hatchet, put on thick rubber boots, and went to work harvesting the easier reached kindling, while I mourned the loss of a climbing tree. This year its bones are still there, a corpse blocking a river towpath, still reminding those who pass that way, of the suddenness of life.