The wind brushes against the farthest reaching branches. The leaves rustle a tune, and the branches dance. The green and muddied colors clash with the grey sky. Your eyes begin at the highest point of the tree, and follow the twisted pathways that leads to the hard earth at its base. Along the way your eyes ride through the narrow alleys and streets of the trunk's bark. If you are lucky you might catch some of the insects who call this place home on their morning commute. You can see it's age and its struggles in the warps and growths. It endures. When your eyes finally make it to the bottom through the grass the true strength of it is revealed. The large roots jut from the ground in all directions a constant reminder of the will to survive. Before you lies grace and fortitude in perfect balance.
Leaves spread wide rejoicing in their bask, pulsating with the winds' song. Branches offer homage to arboreal generations. Her trunk, her mainstay, her mast in the winds. Roots - deep as time, stagnant as stone, with arteries as small as mine - drinking in Earth's bounty.
I stand there listening to her talk, poking the ground with the toe of my shoe as the soil gives way like mud. The grass there is different than the rest of the surrounding area, thicker, greener, hardier. There's an underground spring there, she says, that surfaces right at that spot. That's why the ground is always wet. There used to be a willow tree, she continues. Years ago. It was massive, just like the willow trees pictured in magazines, its branches hiding a world of its own underneath a one tree canopy, an umbrella of green. The tree thrived off that spring and the world thrived off that tree. Birds taking shelter in its branches, frogs living content among the roots. At all hours of the day, she said, there'd be a chorus. Then one day they noticed it starting to get sick. Before she knew it, the branches were bare and the birds had stopped singing. So she had it removed. Now the only thing there is emptiness, no canopy of green, no song birds, no chorus of frogs. Just a bunch of mud and grass. Grass that needs to be cut down with a weed wacker.