Burning Oak, November

Yesterday, the sky in mute
horizontal swaths, air
almost too thick to breathe.
We found the stump of an old oak, man

sized, burning without flame
at the edge of a clearing-splintered wood
raw, bulldozed roots exposed
even the black ants fled

in the stink of old grief
made public and final, old hopes exposed
past tense!—now headless leafless a stump
knocked half out of the earth

and the soul just blue smoke vague
and slow-spreading rising without grace
into an indifferent sky no one will paint,
or photograph, or see
except us: yesterday.