For reasons I don’t understand, having to do 

with physics, the towering white oak

that died years ago shed all of its lesser limbs,

keeping the trunk and a few of the stout, up-

reaching limbs, upright. Though decaying, 

it is being reborn as a habitat, a pillar of succor

and shelter for innumerable species of flora 

and fauna—insects, woodpeckers, Lord knows 

what-all, within and without. Today I celebrate

the five-leaved Virginia Creeper having climbed, 

pitonless, to the summit. I celebrate incrementalism.

I bemoan incrementalism, having summited,

with and without pitons, a peak or two in days 

long-gone-by, and yield, grudgingly, to the inevitable.