This is a photo that I took over the summer in one of Manchester’s many lovely parks

I marked it down in my notes as an oak – and pretty obviously a dead one.  Cause of death?  I don’t know, but all the trees around seem healthy enough so maybe it was disease rather than environmental.  The crown seems to have died back and what’s left of the branches give the appearance of having been twisted by some final stricture into a remarkable suggestion of departing energy splintering a living body.  It’s a very fitting object of contemplation and I tried to do it the honour of close observation before I took the photograph.