Splitter

To the magpie at the top of a dead tree, he was a man slumped awk­wardly over a freshly fallen tree with his pack and dog beside him. As the man woke slowly, rubbing his cheek against the sweetly smelling trunk of the tree, the magpie cocked his head the other way, looked for a mo­ment and then carolled the warbling, rolling, sun bursting song of the morning to the dew jewels held close cupped in the fronds of ferns and to the yellow and pink glow of the sunrise through the trees.