His Tree

I wrote this little piece years ago, inspired by a tree that spoke to me.

I don’t always write, heavy, spiritual pieces.

Sometimes I submit to the waves as they lift me into the knowledge of the sweet dance of life and death. First one, then the other. One cannot be without the other.

Death is not, without life.

Life is not without death.

This at least is one thing we know and cannot ever deny.

His Tree.

 I was just a small sapling when I became uprooted from the earth where my tentacles had crawled deep, finding a foothold to brace myself from the winds that washed over the Pennsylvania landscape.

 I was still a small sapling that day when a dark-haired man and his tall, light wife came, looking me over with a critical eye. The man frowned and walked around me. His hand reached out and brushed dismissively past my drooping reach. I strained my bark towards him, but he did not notice as he bent and inspected my trunk, my roots, the color of the skin that showed through the minute cracks in my rough trunk. I waited breathlessly as he hovered.

The light woman was encouraging, she smiled and lifted her face to the sky, she looked happy. Her face was open and kind. She lifted a hand to my branch and allowed some of my drooping strands to slip through her fingers.

The man’s face lightened as his decision was made. “Lets buy this one” he murmured. She reached for the little tag that was hung inconspicuously, like an afterthought, at the end of my branch. She gasped “we are really paying this much for a tree?” 

The dark man looked irritated, “it’s not just a tree, it’s the tree, it will finish off our patio perfectly, plus, if we get a smaller tree it will take years before it actually looks like a tree”. 

 I felt a thrill as I realized my dreams may have finally been realized. Finally my roots could emerge from the cold mulch and burlap it was wrapped in. Finally I would be able to dig down deep into the soft welcoming earth, finding the water and ground that I need to thrive!

We traveled, not very far, and I saw in surprise that the yard I was going to be in was pristine. Not a single weed glowered up from the soft green earth. The dark man gathered me up and hoisted me beside a lovely patio. He sighed and yawned. I watched him walk into the house and come out with a glass of clinking ice. He stretched out in a lawn chair and the light woman picked up a shovel. She started digging the hole for my trunk with gusto. I watched this with great interest. She patted me down into the ground and heaped big piles of fragrant earth around me. 

  I could hardly keep my arms from lifting with joy. Finally, my home. 

     Life became a gentle cadence of sun rises, sunsets and the occasional rains. I felt the wash of water over my roots, and dug deeper. I grew taller, wider and stronger. Life was wonderful. I was young and strong. Nothing could quench my thirst for life lived in the yard of this beautiful couple that lived just inside the house in front of me. 

I let down my guard and allowed my life to  strain up towards the sun, reaching high. My droopy branches draped around me like lace. The silk of my leaves wandering to and fro in the force of the breeze that came down off the hill in the backyard. I was not expecting catastrophe to strike at my most vulnerable.

But strike, it did. 

I was standing there, one particularly rainy afternoon as my shoulders dripped with the condensation that ran down each leaf and out onto the ground in great drops. I heard a gentle cough. I lifted my gaze and saw in front of me a small, bird-woman. Her shoulders drooped like mine. Her arms hung down beside her even further than my own. She walked carefully, as if the tiny bones in her legs threatened to collapse. She came right up to me, and slowly lifted her head. Her gaze met mine. Her lip curled. She scoffed. I smiled and proffered a feathery hand. She batted it away with a sneer. My face fell, I drooped my arm. 

Off she went with her odd shuffling gait, her little bird hands brushing weakly at the white fringe on her tiny head. I felt a chill of apprehension. My very soul felt cold and weak. 

 The next day was sunny and slowly the chill faded from my limbs. I forgot about the little bird-woman. And that forgetting was my undoing. 

I first noticed that something was amiss a few days later, as I felt a softness begin at the very end of my roots. A small rot, a creeping coldness that started  gathering more and more of my ends down into a dark, heavy sickness. 

 My arms started to feel dry. 

The dark man stepped outside and gazed at me with concern. He did not see  bird woman lurking at the corner of the yard staring balefully at me. He did not feel her hatred as she directed her scorn at my limbs. 

I quaked,I shook, and I fought back bravely. 

When the sun was out, I strained upwards with my dry brown leaves. When the cold water washed over my roots, I fought back valiantly against the rot that was insidiously eating at my roots. 

Occasionally I felt the optimism of the sun shine through the little cracks in my bark, and I could almost imagine that it was all  in the tops of my feathery branches. But then as I looked towards the house, I saw bird woman’s shadow drift behind the gauzy curtain, her small gnarly hands drifting back as she let the curtain fall, and the chill would return, colder, and heavier than before. 

Winter came and light woman hung huge, garish balls of colored glass all over me. I cringed with shame when the dark man came home and saw me. He looked into my eyes and I heard a tortured little moan escape him. But he turned with a smile towards the light woman and she looked delighted as their children bounced around. My head hung, heavy with shame.

He came out one morning and laid a hand on me, he gently rubbed my leaves between his fingers and looked pained. I tried to be reassuring but my heart was chilled and heavy.

   Bird woman lost interest, the damage done. I became a sad old bearded man tree, as my shoulders and hands flowed closer and closer to the ground. My heart was broken, and my leaves were dead. The rot in my bones deep under-ground started creeping up my trunk. I felt weak and tired. I started to wish the dark man would give up and allow the light woman to cut me down and feed me into the fire. 

  I was exhausted....... I wanted to die. 

      I was dead. 

Light woman pulled me gently from my soft earth home, and placed me into the fire. As my bark melted, I rested. Now I would return to earth, where bird woman could never again touch me with her insidious gaze.

This was my destiny. Earth, dust, the sweet, fragrant darkness gently folding back into her bosom.

I am at peace again until my dirt becomes the moist dirt that feeds a seed that bursts into a flame of living.

I am here. I submit to my destiny.

I was his tree.

Now I am at peace.