IV.

The things I know:
        how the living go on living
        and how the dead go on living with them

So that in a forest
        even a dead tree casts a shadow
        and the leaves fall one by one
        and the branches break in the wind
        and the bark peels off slowly
        and the trunk cracks
        and the rain seeps in through the cracks
        and the trunk falls to the ground
        and the moss covers it

        and in the spring the rabbits find it
        and build their nest inside
        and have their young
        and their young will live safely
        inside the dead tree
So that nothing is wasted in nature
        or in love.

—Laura Gilpin, from her poem “Life After Death,” in The Hocus-Pocus of the Universe (Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Company, Inc.), 18.