Heartwood:
By the Shore of the Shenandoah
Inspired by the death of Charles Randall Stanfield
I would like to die as trees. They do not
Respond to music or to other pains.
They do not care about death. There’s no slot
For nourishing music even in veins
Of leaves or in between the rings inside
Those trunks and certainly there is no mind
For galls that grow mortality. The hide
Of trees, mistakenly called bark, is blind
To grief. Depression cheats their acorns of
No joy. No trees have spirits that are felled.
The noblest of them can’t be stripped by love.
When these fall, nobility is not quelled.
I would like to die, slaughtered by a burst
Of lightning, Jehovah acting his worst.
