timber unfit for the fire rotten and infested sinking slowly into the earth below a small stem of life remains at the core a shrinking ribbon of vessels drawing sustenance from its own husk of decomposing tissues eating away at itself to survive just a bit longer once a mighty tree deeply rooted once admirable now blown to the ground by the winds of time unable to withstand the encumbrance of its own growth and as that of man in disdain he fees from a corrosive regret that hollows out cavities that once held him in passion eating the rot becoming the void the insidious poison of regret that turns man into chaff and the living to dead