When great trees fall,
rocks on distant hills shudder,
lions hunker down
in tall grasses,
and even elephants
lumber after safety.

When great trees fall
in forests,
small things recoil into silence,
their senses
eroded beyond fear.

When great souls die,
the air around us becomes
light, rare, sterile.
We breathe, briefly.
Our eyes, briefly,
see with
a hurtful clarity.
Our memory, suddenly sharpened,
examines,
gnaws on kind words
unsaid,
promised walks
never taken.

Great souls die and
our reality, bound to
them, takes leave of us.
Our souls,
dependent upon their
nurture,
now shrink, wizened.
Our minds, formed
and informed by their
radiance, fall away.
We are not so much maddened
as reduced to the unutterable ignorance of
dark, cold
caves.

And when great souls die,
after a period peace blooms,
slowly and always
irregularly. Spaces fill
with a kind of
soothing electric vibration.
Our senses, restored, never
to be the same, whisper to us.
They existed. They existed.
We can be. Be and be
better. For they existed.
~ Maya Angelou “When Great Trees Fall”

It sounded like July 4 fireworks
lighting up the evening

a pop, then silence-
a crack, then several more.

I look out the kitchen window – the old Spitzenburg tree
had fallen, irrevocably split and splintered.

Neither wind, nor lightning-felled,
simply toppled by old age and inner rot

It lies still, its hollowed trunk
like a brittle bone broken

Given up and given in
after decades of battering winter wind storms

Instead it fell in a fragile fruiting finale,
pulled up by the roots

coming for to carry me home
at twilight’s last gleaming.