Waukesha Sewer Raccoon District News
Dec. 3, 2007

Item: Timeless Manifestation (dedicated to the Vollmer family)

A freezing snow and rainstorm befell us
last night in the Sewer Raccoon District.
The dead branches of the skeleton Tamarack
were rigidly coated, over the lichen
by a thick glaze of heavy, even live-
branch-breaking ice.

What would happen, I wondered?
A morning with broken
- let us decompose! -
twigs and branches
reposing on the ground?
A shattered visage?
The end of this strangely decorous
long death?

No. Not a twig lying beneath
the timeless
majestic
needleless
outspread arms
of the long dead (?)
Vollmer Memorial Tamarack!

Everything intact!
This must mean something,
but what……..?
Could it be that my swamp-plucked tree
abideth still?
Is Bill holding forth, somewhere?
Muscle and grit, albeit changed, as ever?
And always?