Cracked

The streak that plunges to the base of atallhemlocklooks atfirst like the bark or even trunk is cracked. But see the line, now partly healed, comes all the way down from the top, where lightning touched the tip and ran the length to ground, exploding phloem with white-hot steam and bursting roots with heat of electricity, so even this giant evergreen is scarred from crown to toe and looks as splitorfissuredas the house of Usher in Poe’s masterpiece, the wound as natural as the rain and wind, inevitable as time, a lesion just the sign of sky’s excessive energy in love with earth’s carnality.

Covert

The crow that sits atop the oak across the road is sentinel forothercrows unseen in fields and woods. Its arcane growls and squawks may seem addressed to me but are instead a warning to its kin, as it inspects and monitors my progress past its perch to see what threat I might present and what direction I might take and when, and whether I am armed or seem aggressive with my hands. So as I walk, a network of covert surveillance and intelligence is exchanged in trees and running back and forth is loud, encrypted in the snarls and barks and shouts and cries, a system of security where I am just the enemy.