Like the Dead Breathing

Who knows how long 

it has exposed its dead belly to the sky,

an unseen eye watching the forest around it.

Even if it has seen nothing-

has someone seen it?

Not really,

Have you seen its texture, its color,

its past life.

Did it fall from the oak above it or the maple,

a day or five hundred

ago.

Moss colected before or after a sighing wind ended its life?

Not brown like a smooth crayola brown,

muddy gray brown, like a swamp's mud

or a dragon's eye.

A twig, The way only a poem would notice it.

Like the way the poet notices the dead breathing.