by J C Scharl
I.
It’s water does this to wood: petrifies the honeyed grain so time runs off the light-shot stone like rain, leaving nothing, taking nothing.
Ages back, a river filled the Painted Desert—see its traces here, reflected in the fractured silver faces of the quartz crystals. It’s water
does this sometimes— more often, though, the sodden log, the drift- caught fraying limb, the tree trunk rift to molder on the forest floor.
But sometimes, time strikes a deal with the living, and rather than bringing rot or ruin, water stills, and with slow alchemy
renders a single tree endless. So whole groves melt away and this one lingers, beyond decay, kept whole, nothing lost
except everything beside.
J.C. Scharl is a poet and critic from Colorado Springs, Colorado. Her poetry has been published in Euphony Journal, The Scores, Fare Forward, and the Curator, among others, and is forthcoming from Measure Review, Convivium, and Presence Journal. Her criticism has been published in Dappled Things and Plough Journal, among others. She tweets as @JCScharl and writes at www.jcscharl.com.
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