Heartwood

Glen Scott, "Ice Explosion," 2006

I walked over a ridge, and saw what we’d heard
the day before, thinking it was transformers that
had blown: full-grown fir and spruce, shattered
where sap froze and burst them, splinters staking
outlines around each fallen tree as if some drunk
carny axe-thrower’s fever dream had come true.
The science I read later, about the fluid mechanics
of these deaths, was impenetrable. All I absorbed—
sapwood’s osmotic streams became the point of
failure; heartwood, impervious, then blew apart.