I sat on a log in Tiergarten
only a stump of what it originally was
cut off at the trunk by who knows who
who knows when
and in what order the fallen or the cut I will never be able to say for certain.

This log, presumably some sort of maple based on the markings of the bark and the overwhelming amount of maples in the vicinity of said log, sat by a small and stagnant stream that slowly courses its way through the entirety of the park. The stream is filled with garbage, some sort of unidentified mucus or scum, many small fish and the consequent waterfowl I assume are mallards and a bufflehead couple of some kind. In an island maybe six meters across there was a red squirrel with tufted ears that played with its reflection on the trunk of a leaning cottonwood just above the surface of the water. There is a fox den about twenty meters north of this upturned rootball that the local rabbits come dangerously close to as displayed in their crepuscular grazing. There was a small mouse that came scuttling out for a brief errand from almost beneath the decaying monument. Although I was not able to catch a look of the beaver that chewed the alder opposite me on the island I was able to see in this sit that it had indeed returned to finish the job and had cut clean through the wood. Even so it was unsuccessful due to the clinging branches of the shrubbery below that would not release the fallen timber low enough for the beaver to harvest the fresh cambium lawyer from the twigs.

The log let me sit there without question to observe the many neighbors it had come to witness throughout its time spent on the edge of the water. Based on the decay of the bark, the state of the wood, the lack of soil in the upturned root system, the hole left by the upturning of the roots, how much detritus was slowly filling this hole, and the consecutive years of nettles and wall lettuce growing out of the log itself I would say that it had been lying this way for over ten years.

A bench sits nearby where I have seen multiple couples sitting nestled into one another. How many kissing couples has this log been backdrop for? How many strange men or women have used the privacy and security of the sunken pit and the low pruned yew to urinate or sleep or what have you?

It feels the cold and wet spring with little shelter. It sees the sun in summer through sparse dappled light shown through the mostly maple canopy. The few roots still planted deeply in the soil are dead but still feel the cool water below the water table. It is slowly sinking into the ground as leaf litter, garbage, feces, and decaying plant matter growing out from under it slowly pile up around it to form a thin layer to provide nutrients for the next years vegetation.

It is taking slow, deep breaths into the ground as the wood it once pulled up from the soil touched by its roots comes back into contact with the layers of earth it rests on. The earths way of tilling the soil. This is the natural cycle that keeps the microorganism that remain safe in the darkness can continue to work even as biomass is pulled upward and folded back again. One can only begin to touch on the stories this simple log has been a part of in this saved little corner of the city.