Painting by
Merissa Gilbert Garrison
DEATH OF A GIANT
The immense white birch tree
in the back woods is dying -
its broken limbs now pasted
to the sorrowful sky,
as woodpeckers tattoo
its papery white skin
with black funerary designs.
Clusters of insects and blotches of mold
congregate and multiply in its folds
of scalloped bark and toothless grin,
as gatherings of birds in silence, grieve -
on rotting branches like feathery leaves.
