The burned tree, in black marble, holds the moment of destruction itself. Not to reassure us that something better follows — fire is final, and what it takes does not return. The same fire that ends this tree is the fire that feeds all life; the sun is a ball of fire. I gild the char because the gold is the fire — the one force that destroys and creates in the same act. I stay in the moment of death and lay beauty on it, as an act of gratitude, because the thing will disappear forever and the world's instinct is to look away and call it natural. The forest returns wider. This tree does not. I carve it so it is not forgotten.