The idol

through a multitude of panes

across the mist-ridden courtyard

a tree, nondescript—a pine—a fir—? his name lost to the indoors

stands uprooted, his sap frozen

as by the chilling spectacle becoming

his surrogate forest, that of mirrors and hardwood flooring

squared and scorched, his ancestors as pagan monuments to finery

stand covered in gold foil

and an atmosphere as thick and dead as peat, or vitriol—life

felled, timber called with the waning orbit

of the sun each day less punctual

the fall of an empire, the apex overcome,

the seasons in their sisyphean course bring us to a feast of scarcity

the smell of orange zest and needles turned deciduous

a foreign cheer fills the room—a pale substitute

for nature, for life— the tree slowly

assimilated by the chandeliers and ottomans

shedding the few needles it has held on to

increasingly emaciated as it is denied all but luxuries

covered in mirrors disguised as orbs—even the tree must

make itself as the invisible to the superficial, unchanging light

that floods the living room—a weak surrogate for sunlight,

a weak surrogate for a forest, for the truly pagan idolatry of wind and water

foreign to the mausoleum of finery that has entrapped the tree

its endless reflection as sole company—the odour of its waning needles

constricted, musty, deprived of the gale that brought with it

true life, true death—and its name