If a Tree Falls in the Forest

The knowledgeable call them widow-makers
and for good reason, readily discernible
upon viewing their precarious perches
generally stout branches of hale trees
catching the tall dead trunks that suddenly
collapse onto neighbouring trees in the
thickness of a forest. Long-dead and rotting
steadily, wind, rain and seasons make their
mark and eventually the dead collapse
often becoming snagged like the one that
has been leaning over the trail we pass on 
a daily basis in our perambulations through
our neighbourhood forest. Picturesque in
the winter months piled high with snow and
standing out on the overhead landscape 
where all other trees are sturdily upright
while it remains perpendicular, its quite
considerable height stretching lengthily
from its stricken source to its perch, eroding
steadily in nature's inimitable cycling plan
of birth and renewal. Glad we were that we
missed the spectacle of its final decline
its mast splayed across and between other
trunks and over the trail. The sudden 'whomp'
of a falling tree is disorienting, difficult for
the strike-vulnerable to immediately discern
and react. Grateful we were to be absent in
yet another event where no one was about
and that warning sound remained unheard.