After life

This dead tree stands on the side of Wittenham Clumps, just below the old fort's ramparts. The location, as anyone reading these posts will have long ago gathered, is one of my favourite spots for contemplation. I come here often. When Catie is away and the house empty I climb up here most evenings. This tree always arrests me as I make my way up the narrow lane to the crest, its pale bark and gnarled limbs a stark sentinel against the skyline. In death it forms its own grey memorial stone, marking its own passing, revealing in its twisted form the story of its life. Within its structure where the rhythms of its own life-force have perished and ceased, life persists, it has become a new habitat for the borers and gnawers, fungi and lichen and mould, and for those of us who seek this place - a half felt, half thought metaphor.