I am an oak that laughs in the breeze! I dance and enjoy the rushing torrent that twists through my branches. People come and sit with me and we laugh together, and we share the shade when the sun gets too hot.
People have written on me, but they didn’t know that it did me harm. So I covered it up and my bark overtook it, until a day when someone discovered it. And they traced the lines and asked me about it and wondered at its unnatural mutation. I bent very low and ached to remember the carver of my symbols–or the carvers, rather. My leaves were shaky as I spoke, for they knew the pain that it cause me, how it had caused my trunk to grow up crooked and my core to foresee cracking. Then I found another tree to lean on and I grew around it to stay erect. I wanted to stand alone, but to severe my growth around it could result in my end. And so it did.
A day came when that branch incurred a rottenness which resulted in the crumbling and collapsing. My leaves again trembled and my trunk cried out that she could not handle it. She viewed the ground and sighed. I was bending and aching and all I could do was flail toward the heavens. And as I flailed, I fell. I fell. I remember it all so well. Dirt covered my side. My branches had never felt the earth before. I was dismayed. And my roots now saluted the sky as one does when a soldier is fallen.
Along came a man with great strength who lifted me and carried me. Though I was parched for water, I was well enough to know the man was the one who most often came to sit with me.
Off in the distance I could hear running water, and my inner being revived. He–the man who was my friend–set me down with my roots submerged in the clear blue flowing. My leaves unwithered. My trunk breathed in deep. The man told me that I had a new place to live, and it was near this river. What better place could I need?
Standing vertically again, I was placed in the earth where the man had dug a hole for me. How exuberant I felt to be placed in such rich soil beside this clear water! It was so green there. And the man cut off some of my branches as I shuddered. But he simply smiled and said, “No good thing can come unless something has died”. So I reached toward heaven and praised; and the man said that I would grow strong. And he stayed and made his house there.
