The Nurse Tree

Why waste away in a box when you could be a nurse tree? That’s what they call dead logs: mushroomeries of the woods. Your living room’s a wood of couches, books, and chairs. You’re dead not at all, but could you be preparing for things to grow inside the chest of the log you plan to become: cherished compost heap where heat turns the brown mess of feelings, sorry, that’s peelings, into comp-o- sition? For we who love our hands in dirt, a leaf skirt de composing seems an ideal station between this life and next: I visit your room as on a forest walk. Passing a fallen log — is that you? — I see a scarlet fungus cap pop up from friable bark.