The Arithmetic of a Dead Tree

There’s a field north of Tiverton. In its centre is a dead tree. It’s either landed from another world and no one noticed, or it was abandoned by its fellow trees, removed by some inhuman force. Either way, it has lost the fight.

Pleasantly chilled this corpse
It was a stray thought
Not unlike the effervescence
Tumbling up from the morning’s antacid
Prior to the first incision

A hangover beat against her skull
Like lower-branch apples
Bouncing rhythmically
In the breeze, on hard ground,
Crushing to the cranium

Cause of death: unknown
She noted, adding abandonment
Internal contusion
Dictaphone didn’t argue

The timeline of death,
A matter of philosophical debate
Last moments preceded by
Irreversible decline
Autumn’s gorgeous browning

An annual preparation
For the final apple pluck
Its trunk and branches
Thrust up to heaven
In fist-like silent protest

Skeletal and off-white
Reflecting the sun that
Gave it life, reduced,
Unswaying, ready to rot
Subtracted to zero.

To the windward side
An apple, softened and bruised
Unloads its cargo
Nomadic cells multiplying
Secretly in the soil

In tiredness, she lay a palm
Flat on the upturned fist
Cause of life – touch