For A Fallen Tree

I sensed your tragedy before I even realized what had befallen you. You, an acacia tree older than my country. Me? A humble witness to your inevitable downfall. You, baring your branches high on a bluff next to the Emmarentia Dam, innocent and ignorant to the dangers of natural electricity. When I found you it looked as if a giant had pulled you apart like a head of broccoli, splitting your trunk and throwing your remains, with the slightest clues of charred wood now permanently burned upon you. I ran my fingers over them and whispered “I’m sorry this happened to you.” And I was routing for you, dear tree. Shaking my fist at the malicious bolt that had toppled your gravitas to the ground. Routing I was, until I found myself watching the lightning mere hours later. From a precipice it seems more glorious than malicious, I swear it. But it dawned on me, that perhaps you’re the luckiest, gone in a blaze of unexpected electric glory. A hapless martyr among the foliage. Gone instantly, saved from the prolonged decay of a natural demise. Forever to have your trunk traced by the fingers of empathetic wanderers and wonderers alike.