
I slept approximately not at all.
The house shook,
the windows howled,
the fireplace flue played
the pan flute all night long.
When I walked out my door at eight thirty, I saw this--

which dropped a daredevil
down into the crown of the tree
who chopped two branches out
with a hand saw, attached the cables
and while we gaped from the upstairs landing window
that two-story pine tree
the last draft of my novel Tributary, 19.6 years in the making. Sharing the very last hours on this my magnum opus with the flight of the bumblebee pine tree--

I may have to take up the pan flute.
And play it hiking in the pines.