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Friday, June 29, 2012

The Shade of my Ancient Branches

Come sit with me under the darkness of my ancient branches.  These long limbs that bend and sway to no master but the Wind.  That which commands me; pushes me absent-mindedly, violently shakes me and twists my limbs in anger.  That which caresses me like a tender lover; my master the wind.

These ancient branches that have warmed to the rays of a hundred year of suns. That have drank from unending torrents of rain and that have been stripped bare by the cruel hands of a merciless killer called Winter.  My branches are unyielding and will offer you solace.  Come sit with me under the shade of my ancient branches.

Take your shoes off as you walk towards your resting place.  Leave behind these trappings of modern man against the curb; against the threshold where man and nature are divided.  Where business and commerce and industry fade to a boorish roar and where the blades of grass bend and bow in your wake.  Where ants tremble at your approaching footsteps and your soles sink ever so softly into the warm earth.  Take off your shoes and feel what your forefathers felt in ageless times before you.  When beast and man collided in a dance of fear and desperation and fire.

Lay your weight against my scarred and sacred pillar; this lifeline that connects earth and sky.  Feel my coarse skin dig unapologetically into your back. Know that I do this without malice. Rather, it serves as a reminder that while the world around you changes, I remain steadfast in my beautiful simplicity.  For while I move and sway when currents blow, I will not move for you.....for man.  I am shelter; I am resolute.

Listen as I whisper to you in the shade of my ancient branches.  Do you hear what I share with you?  Do you understand a language that was spoken millennia before you and will be sung still when the next epoch comes?  It is wisdom I share with you in these whispers.  Whispers of days gone by; of secrets and sins, of a changing landscape that continues to pitch and roll around you as you sit in the shade of my ancient branches; unmoved.

Will you allow yourself to travel farther away from the world you come from? Will your fingers find their way into the rich earth beneath you?  Where death is imminent yet life springs eternal?  Do you feel it?  The pulse of something much older than you.  The movement of things largely unseen; the sliding of bodies, the frantic push of tissue through dirt?  I am a part of all that moves below. Your fingers straddle the threshold of this world underneath yet I plunge into it's ether; into obsidian pitch. Perhaps reaching for a returned touch that I will never truly find.

Our time draws to a close. Perhaps you will carry some of my world back into yours.  As you wish movement back into your limbs, I whisper sage advice down to you from my highest reaches.  I leave you with dirt under your fingernails as a reminder of days gone by when your ancestors worked the lands.  I leave you with furrows in your clothing as a reminder that these lines have been earned not from a hard days work, but from allowing your inhibitions to run rampant for a time.  I leave you.

As you walk back to the sidewalk; to the threshold where man and nature are divided, look back upon this Titan.  Look back upon these ancient branches and know that you may return to the shade when the weight of the world becomes to much to bear.  As time drags on and the call of the world outside your window beckons, come sit with me under the darkness of my ancient branches.

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