The last big cottonwood fell. I have been watching it lean over for months but last night with the strong winds and another burst from the river it topples. I take a walk to see how the fence is doing this morning, and that familiar silhouette the heron would roost upon or the eagle land on top is not visible on the horizon. I run up to the turn where I can always see it clearly and feel panic in my chest seeing it is no longer there. I feel like it waited for me to come home to fall.

I think of all the years I visited this tree, wrote about it, found feathers under it's branches. I am sad to see it lying on its side defeated by the lack of ground under it. My father tree is gone, and the majestic presence it had on the edge of our land as the river turned southeast below us will only be a memory.

I take pictures of the long trunk and tangled nest in the branches. I walk around to various positions to try to capture all its angles before it sinks entirely into the river and becomes a white bone floating next to the partner tree that fell a few years earlier.

Maybe the two trees now talk more easily to each other sharing the same medium of water between them. They begin to form a small lake between them for the time being, a small composed pool of water shimmering.