Remnants

I wish I could have seen it happen.
what's left are the remnants,
an unsettled mystery:

a huge, old pine stands not a foot
from where the incident took place;
the other tree exists only in bottom half,
and split down the middle by someone's giant axe

the debris scatters across forest
for a few hundred feet;
some pieces are as small as fingers,
one is an eight-foot-tall ladder to the sky

and it has plunged, stuck itself into
soil knotted with rocks and roots
and it sits, awaiting a climber,
perhaps red squirrel will find a perch there.

I can still feel the buzz of sky and wind,
hear the crack of exploding fragments, and if I really listen,
each of them tumbling lightly down with the falling leaves.

Down the blackened trunk,
something sharpened its claws,
zigs and zags extend down the wood
where Lightning left her mark.