People always like to describe me. Sweeping, stoic, strong. My favorite is majestic. They point to my broad arms, my lushness, the color of my trunk. What a fictitious and silly thing. Who cares what color my bark turns out to be.
It would appear at first glance that I care, nurture, and provide shade for children and birds and elderly men on their afternoon walks. I haven’t a choice in the matter, truth be told.
If I had a voice, people tend to think, it would be silky smooth. My brain would be filled with poetry. My muscles could shoulder the world. If I had muscles, mind you, I’d be walkin.
I am simply a tree. I stand in one place my whole damn life. I bet you didn’t think trees have piss-poor tongues or wish they could walk a mile in a human’s shoes. I suppose these are the wooden thoughts of a tree. I suppose if we got angry, that’s what we’d say.
“I’m more than a stalk of wood, you imbecile.”
I grow weary of people carving initials into me. I cannot bat them away with my hands. I grow impatient of couples laying under me kissing for hours. Do they think I enjoy this open display of affection? I do not care to see their little human mouths sucking on one another. Back in my youth there were only fields and less chatter.
I was born benevolent. Sure, sure. Long ago, I was created in the image of something grand and generous, so it makes sense that my job is to provide shade and comfort. I suppose I’ve hardened. The rings grew around me, creating lines and circles documenting the years I’ve stood.
Now, I just want to take a nap.
Springtime is a lot of work, if you really must know. Buds don’t just create themselves. I have to push them out, each and every one, knowing their life will be short and I won’t see them more than a year’s time. And yet I birth them anyway, taking a moment to enjoy them when they are small. It’s not a long moment. Mostly I keep swinging my branches in the wind as to avoid those stupid robins from pooping on me.
All sorts of creatures run across my various limbs. Squirrels shove nuts inside of holes in my cracked skin, woodpeckers poke at me with such blasted confidence. Birds sit atop of me and curl up their string into nests in the corners of my arms. And when the freeze comes, all the leaves I’ve birthed just fall off in a crumbled heap on the ground. I would cry so many tears but I wasn’t blessed with tear ducts, or emotions really, so I must simply watch them all coast along the wind to their inevitable demise.
I have no one to talk to. No one that I enjoy, anyway. Trees cannot go meet friends at the movies or go out for drinks. We must simply stand for dozens or even hundreds of years, only talking to those who were planted around us. That maple tree to my left would forever be on my nerves, if I had any, chattering this way and that about his insides oozing out. And yet even he is better than the blooming pear. All show, that tree. I turn my leaves the other direction when she speaks because it’s an incessant stream of drivel.
All I want to do is move. Unearth myself and put one root in front of another, walking or sliding or somehow transporting myself as the people can do. We are stuck in the place where we are planted.
It’s insufferable, to be caught here as a comforter when all I want is to be comforted.
It is the same boring pattern every year. Birth the leaves, get cold, watch the leaves die, avoid the robin poo. Shiver in the wind, pray for warmth, let the critters run all over you, start again.
It’s downright depressing, being a tree. Just for a moment I would like to be a squirrel or a fox or a child getting off the bus. Something, anything, that moves more than its arms. The pear is showing off again. The maple tree is leaking. All I can do is sit and sway in the breeze. It’s a hearty breeze, and the buds are breaking open. I suppose it’s not the worst time to be a tree, considering.
Here come those mouth suckers again. They sit on the grassy lump underneath my lower branch. He hangs upon me in a lazy way and looks in her eyes. She does have a lovely laugh, that part is true. I like to hear the stories of how she grew up in Puerto Rico. He loves it too. The last time she talked about her mother they ate little sandwiches, spread out over a red blanket. She wears dresses and spreads the skirt out like a fan around her.
She has a lovely smell. He has a way of looking at her.
Her accent is strong. His arms wrap around her tight.
My leaves stop moving for a moment so I can hear better. I settle down into the afternoon knowing that they are beneath me, that I’m shading them, that they have a safe place to share their stories. She takes off her sweater in the heat so my leaves rustle again, to make sure there is a breeze upon them. When they leave, I would be sad, if a tree could be sad. He is going overseas with the Army and they won’t meet here in their special place.
Their special place is under me.
That makes me feel funny inside even though I have no heart. Wood cannot feel things. I’m being an old damn fool.
People like to describe me. Instead of majestic, a better word is lonely. Lonely for a purpose. Lonely for a reason to stand. Lonely for a family of my own.
It would appear at first glance that I care, nurture, and provide shade for children and birds and elderly men on their afternoon walks. I suppose I do, truth be told.
I am more than a stalk of wood. I’m the wood that holds you inside of the rings, remembering. And that’s the hardest part. People leave. People die. I outlive them. I just got used to the way she laughed, but she’ll not return to me now except on occasions where she will cry and hold onto my trunk for comfort. All I want to do is protect her, and yet I am but a tree.
Loss is strong. But some things stay the same. Birth the leaves, get cold, watch the leaves die, avoid the robin poo. Shiver in the wind, pray for warmth, let the critters run all over you, start again. At least it’s a familiar pattern, something predictable. I never give up, I never forget, I never stop.
Maybe that is majestic, after all.
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