The bone white snag above Beaver Creek fell
down in a storm. It was a two-tined fork pointed
skyward, a favored perch of magpies, its alabaster
brightness a cynosure obscured the trees beside it.
It began to lean after heavy spring rains saturated
the ground, we thought it might take down a tree
beside it but instead sheared o only a few limbs.
Now the space it occupied appears gap-toothed,
and gone forever is its sculptural beauty—that fork
tuning the wind—will be missed until memory
of it fades and what is not there is what is there.
Published in – Clover: A Literary Rag Vol. 13, Summer 2017 & Resting in the Familiar