Outside the neighbor’s rhododendron was flapping, the tall trees swaying. We were between fronts. What they call a sun break out here. I remembered the Boy Scouts were coming for the dead Christmas trees but you had to have them curbside by 8. I dragged the tree up the road, still heavy, angled it on the corner, fastened a check to the trunk with a rubber band. Returned home, paused, got back into bed. One of only two days in the week I don’t have to worry about being anywhere, I thought. Got up for coffee, picked out a recipe for later, went back up the road to the lake. Followed the pattern of the tree in the gravel, a long snake. It was still there at the end, crude-looking like that on its side, smaller, somehow. And saw myself in a box in some parlor with the lid open and artificial light, forcing my loved ones to see me like that. No way, never.

Categories: death, poetry, prose, writing

Tags: creative nonfiction, Memoir, mid-life crisis, pacific northwest, poem, poetry, prose, William Pearse writer, writing