OLD CHERRY TREE

Out on an afternoon walk up the far forest road I saw that a large cherry branch had fallen partly into the way. Looking for the source, I found deep in the wood a very old wild cherry tree I hadn't noticed before, well over two feet through at the base, rising tens of meters, its bare branches broad and thick in light of the gray sky that loomed through the wide opening in the surrounding evergreen forest canopy, a spreading space that the old cherry tree had claimed by its presence, had filled with its blossoms and roofed with its green leaves for maybe a century, but now its limbs were bare - even of buds - its once strong branches now breaking and falling in the winter winds, the cathedral of its remnant trunks reaching still, snowflakes falling through them now like its own blossoms on the forest air, its fallen branches nourishing the cherry saplings rising at its feet...