All at Once

...I don't know what struck me most -

   - whether it was the stop-in-your-tracks-type beauty of the tree,

          or the fact that it was so striking
               because half was a smooth gray skeleton, 
                         elegantly and mysteriously reaching up 
                         to the sky in swirls and
                         twists, branching out of the surrounding 
                    green that danced around it from the
               other half, with colours bursting from the burns except for 
                    one large branch where a hole posed, exposed 
                         and ravaged with disease of a
                         different colour and texture from the rest of the body: 
                         rotting and blooming all at once, yet
               still determined to stand [if only in part]
          whether out of stubbornness or habit or no other option -

   - or the fear of what this all might mean...