Time Lapse

We pass a mountain on Highway 2

thick with young Lodgepole pines about 15-feet tall.

This means there was a fire

about 20 years ago on this mountain.

Now there’s just a few bare trunks

sticking way up over the new growth of conifers—

wood gray, branches thin and

broken short.

They’ll fall soon.

They’ll fall

when the rain is coming down and the wind’s blowing.

Amidst lightning flashes,

in freeze frames

if you were standing there

you’d see them fall—

three quick snapshots of a dead tree

toppling over.

Or maybe

on a still blue sky day like this one,

it creaks,

cracks,

falls.

Home for bugs and animals now,

bench for teenagers

or lone travelers,

firewood for campers.

The wood melts into the soil

and it’s

soil.

I don’t believe it ever was

a Lodgepole pine,

“alive” or “dead,”

standing, falling, lying, rotting—

dust is all it ever was.

Fire and dust.

The whole mountain an ocean,

the sky a rock,

our rig, and us in it,

turns to ash.