Rotten wood

The streets squelched

with each soft step.

Leaves - dry and dead,

yield to the mushy earth.

Each foot impression

sinking into the soil.

Somewhere lay a broken wood.

Its edges rough and uneven

layered with moss it was -

green and blackened.

Ravages of time

pronounced in each drop of water

that encased in each curve

of the broken dead tree

that it was once

suffer to fester.

Time seems to clutch the wood

with rabid fierceness

and gentle commitment.

And yet the wood is no longer a tree

it was.

It is a dead plank

effusing softened smells,

aromatic whiffs -

that lay trapped

within cloud clusters,

that burst and seeped liquid mobile life.

Once when it was a tree.

Lushness of leaves - green and lively

that coloured the branches.

The wood lay there

smelling rotten -

the same, sweet smell of new life

that eagerly awaits death.

The wood like an yielding smile

lay propped on the

Ravages of time.

It awaits a fern

a mushroom

a seed

a lichen

to extract the left remnants

of life, nutrition.

To get released.

To be free.

To explore.

To discover.

To transform.

To transcend time

into timelessness.