The Storm-struck Tree

As the storm-struck oak leaned closer to the house —

The remaining six-story half of the tree listing toward the glass box

Of  the kitchen like someone in the first tilt of stumbling —

The other half crashed into the neighbors’ yards, a massive

Diagonal for which we had no visual cue save for

An antler dropped by a constellation —

As the ragged half   leaned nearer, the second storm of cloying snow

Began pulling on the shocked, still-looming splitting, and its branches dragged

Lower like ripped hems it was tripping over

Until they rustled on the roof under which I

Quickly made dinner, each noise a threat from a body under which we so recently

Said, Thank goodness for our tree, how it has accompanied us all these years,

Thank goodness for its recitation of the seasons out our windows and over

The little lot of our yard, thank goodness for the birdsong and 
squirrel games

Which keep us from living alone, and for its proffered shade, the crack of the bat

Resounding through September when its dime-sized acorns

Land on the tin awning next door. Have

Mercy on us, you, the massively beautiful, now ravaged and charged

With destruction.

We did speak like that. As if from a book of psalms

Because it took up the sky