The beetle-ridden column of pine, still

coppery-brown—-stark against a flood

of deciduous cousins’ May green,

looms, surrounded by shedded, layered

bark chunks and brittle limbs detached

and dropped to litter his meager yard;

precursors of the fall, numbered in

days or months, unknowable, to come.

Still, in wind, his stilted sway of youth,

but now with creaks and groans of doors

closing….opening, still offering his body

to nuthatch, squirrel and the jay and still,

though fading, his green crescent of a

smile at his tip-top, unencumbered by

regrets or daunting musings of mortality.