Long Dead

I am long dead. Drowned by a lake filled to quench your thirst, feed your baby. Submerged for a warm bath to envelope your grandmother's parchment skin; irrigation for a black farmer's cotton field. You imagine that I know nothing beyond this field of purple thistle transforming into seed dust? And the mucky bottom beneath my toes? Roots that haven't moved a drop of sap, called by siren sun, in half a century hear better dead. Fewer distractions. And every drop of water whispers secrets.

These gray branches, leaf, twig, and stem long stripped away, catch stories. Stories of dams and floods; droughts and longing for the rain. The moment of birth not different than the ending. You feel it as you weave your boat between my branches, a trace across the water's face like a child's finger across her mother's. Feel the power that transcends death; the power of having reached high and wide will not be diminished long after I am another piece of driftwood washed up against that limestone shore.