Lizzy Burnam 🐞

I walked into the marsh intending to die there. 
The soft mud would take me, the ducks would dip their beaks 
into the water and weep. I found a seat where

I thought death would come easily: an old log
with a wet moss blanket, cool and damp on my bum. 
The ducks gathered and honked. A gentle veil of fog

rose from the earth and a chorus of pitch pine, white
cedar, and chestnut oak began to sway and sing
and through the thin black branches broke a ray of light

that struck like un coup de coeur on my resting place, 
the log. The copse in unison began to speak: 
When a tree falls, it becomes a log—not a space 

where a tree once was. Not a dead tree, a dearly 
beloved tree, mother of acorn. Not a tree 
memorial garden. Not a corpse of a tree. 

Just a log. Someday, you will fall and you will be
the same thing with a different name. You will become
a log, a duck, the wind-carried scent of honey-

suckle. You will be as you are, unhurt, un-grieving.  
You will become a home, a sanctuary where 
the living will come to remember the living.