A Tree

Today I wrote something. It's about a tree.


It stands about two and a half feet wide at the base, differentiating into roots just before they disappear into the ground. There it reaches out further and deeper every day to gather the energy that becomes the tree. About a foot above the turf it suddenly narrows to a mere two feet across. Standing nearly straight, it leans slightly to the left. The ridges in the bark here are large and deep, the wrinkles of a tree that has seen so much. The deepest ones cascade from a cluster of three knots. Those knots, the nearly healed scars of three branches cut long ago, call out man's history with this tree.

Just around the tree to the left of the knots is the lowest branch reaching out and away from the trunk. First it moves up, then bends and shifts its direction to be nearly parallel to the ground, finally three quarters of its way away from the tree, it explodes with leaves.

Above another knot - a much newer scar - the tree splits. Now it follows two paths, splitting again and again until it forms a canopy. The leaves are a rich, but surprisingly light green, interrupted here by yellow, there by brown. They form bunches near the end of each branch, clusters of color attached to a rich gray-brown.

As the wind moves, the tree comes to life. It whispers the sound of the rain that nourishes it and bends and flutters, keeping its balance.


-Kat