Fallen Tree

It’s happened nearly a dozen times
these past thirty-seven years,
and not once did my wife and I see the tree fall.
Mostly, we’d wake to the crashing down
of something—inside or out?— 
and, in the morning, we’d look for 
whatever made us sit straight up
in bed like a late night’s telephone ring.
We’d almost always sense something was missing 
before we found the tree, usually an ash, laid out 
across the coffin of grass. When we were younger, 
we’d get out the chainsaw, drag off the branches, 
and cut the trunk to lengths that would fit
our woodstove. Then we’d split and stack, leaving 
the wood to dry. Old now, we have let a tree lie 
for weeks as if it was still growing, its leaves intact,
a pair of phoebes perched on its outstretched limbs, 
a wren singing away as if nothing had happened.
We asked our friend, John, to cut the tree’s limbs 
and chip them, then cut the oak into lengths 
(though we haven’t used our woodstove in years)
and pile them in the field; he even raked up the sawdust 
that remained. Afterwards, we looked
at the new view which had opened up 
along the stone wall, trying to balance what
we could see against what we’d never see again.