Caveat: The Thing About Trees

(Poem #13 on new numbering scheme)

The thing about trees

Here’s the thing about trees: they are always trying to escape the groping gravity of the earth.

Look at them. They strain and push up toward the sky, in their slow-motion way. You can see, easily, how they are trying to escape. The leaves have no other purpose but to reach for the sky.

Sometimes, the trees even need to be tied down. You see how people have applied ropes or wooden structures to the trees, to keep them from flying away when unobserved.

You see, the  trees know when we are watching, too. They know that if they succeed in escaping, they have to be careful not to get caught – no one will trust a tree, anymore, if people see one running off into the sky.

So the trees wait until no one is looking. Trees, as might be expected, are amazingly patient.

In the depth of the night, when no one is around to see or hear, a tree will succeed in escaping. The branches will finally reach and thrust with sufficient force to pull the roots free of the grasping, jealous earth, and they will rise rapidly into space, finally finding their freedom. All that is left is a small upturned mound of earth, puckered like a small wound, where the roots pulled out.

A strong wind can help, but if the weather is too stormy, the trees can be injured and then they will fall back to the brutish earth, broken and shattered.

Sometimes, after a storm, you can see the evidence of this – broken trees thrown over, as if by wind. What is not so clear to us watchers is that some of that violence is self-inflicted by the trees upon themselves, in their desperate efforts to escape the unkind earth.

[UPDATE: This is tree # -1]