The Storm-struck Tree

As the storm-struck oak leaned closer to the house — The remaining six-story half of the tree listing toward the glass box Of  the kitchen like someone in the first tilt of stumbling — The other half crashed into the neighbors’ yards, a massive Diagonal for which we had no visual cue save for An antler dropped by a constellation — As the ragged half   leaned nearer, the second storm of cloying snow Began pulling on the shocked, still-looming splitting, and its branches dragged Lower like ripped hems it was tripping over Until they rustled on the roof under which I Quickly made dinner, each noise a threat from a body under which we so recently Said, Thank goodness for our tree, how it has accompanied us all these years, Thank goodness for its recitation of the seasons out our windows and over The little lot of our yard, thank goodness for the birdsong and 
squirrel games Which keep us from living alone, and for its proffered shade, the crack of the bat Resounding through September when its dime-sized acorns Land on the tin awning next door. Have Mercy on us, you, the massively beautiful, now ravaged and charged With destruction. We did speak like that. As if from a book of psalms Because it took up the sky