Light After the Lightning Strike

The tree was struck by lightning
and did not die.

It could have stood for years,
split open to the weather,
blackened and scarred down one side,
still able to make sap rise
and grow green.

For years.

Still leafing.

Still taking rain into itself.

Still shading and cooling and breathing.

Still holding birds
in the crook of its damaged limbs.

The nests.

The knot hole
where small things could shelter.

It had already survived
its fire from the sky.

Anointed.

YOU.

Then the withered one called for it
to be cut down.

YOU.

Practical.

Justified.

Damaged.

Rot.

Risk.

A fear of falling.

The usual words
used to make an ending sound reasonable.

By hazy morning
there was only the stump,
the sawdust,
the clean interruption
where something enormous
had been.

But by day and by night
I still see it.

Not the wood exactly.

Not the bark.

Not even the wound.

I see the pale electric current
rising in the shape of the trunk
that is no longer there.

I see branches made of light and memory
woven through the absence.

An iridescent ghost canopy
lifting into the blue purple dark.

A silver filament life
still writing itself with gold
against the evening opal sky.

The air still knows
where the limbs were.

The ground still holds
the pressure of the roots.

The birds still turn
toward that place
as if guided
by something deeper than sight.

Sometimes, at dusk,
the missing tree glows more clearly
than the standing ones.

This is how I understand
the death of someone
who was more light than darkness.

Cut down
by a series of misunderstandings.

Miscalculations.

The withered one came to him
with a crooked walk,
uneven steps,
a lack of humility
mistaken for certainty,
an ignorance that did not know
it was ignorant.

The withered one still walks.

Satisfied that something is gone.

One and the same.

But it is not gone.

Never simply gone.

The life force is never gone.

Not here
in the old way.

But impressed upon everything
that was aware of it.

A force that entered the world
and cannot be entirely removed.

A shape in the air
that remains after the body is gone.

A charge.

A shimmer.

A pulse we still feel
when the room goes quiet
and no one has said his name.

Ian is not standing here.

And yet—

his absence is not empty.

It has weight.

It has contour.

It has weather.

It has a hum beneath it.

It has a strange bright pressure
that sometimes arrives
like memory,

but feels older than memory.

Maybe memory
is only one name for it.

Maybe love is electrical.

Maybe a life, once lived,
goes on moving
through the people
and places it touched.

The tree was struck by lightning.

The tree survived.

The tree was healing.

Then the withered one came.

Declared a diagnosis.

Directed care.

The tree was cut down.

Someone felt power
in their actions.

Someone got paid
for the services.

None of them right.

The withered one
very wrong.

But it cannot see
past its own bony nose,
its fingers,
its feet.

It does not see.

At night,

I do.

I see the tree
lit from within.

Many will be like that tree.

Cut down.

Not all will leave the light.

Not the withered one.

But the light of others
will still be seen.

Ian.

Their electric energy
will still be felt.