I am a tree

I am a tree.

I am strong, my roots deep, branches reach high and try to paint the sky while weary birds fly and find their rest in me.

I am a tree.

When the rain and swirling howling winds comes, small creatures seek refuge inside, on top and underneath my thick trunk. Sparrows build their nests on my branches, squirrels hide their acorns inside the hollows of my secure body and children climb up and through my limbs, building homes, hiding places and foreign lands awaiting them to explore.

I am a tree.

Right now the world is shaking. The wind and rains are vehemently set on bringing me down. My beloved branches are being ripped from my body but my roots dig further and further down, plunging into the deep cool earth grasping for strongholds. I bend and bow but even as I am whipped and tossed and thrown and thrashed and crashed and bashed against the ferocious winds, I will stand.

I am a tree.

My branches are gone. My body is hollow. My roots are drowning and the sun is blocked. Is this what death feels like? My leaves are no more and the only things living within me are vermin and pests. Termites devour me from the inside out and my thick bark, now thin, is shedding to the ground.

I am a tree.

A loud piercing whirr and scream are the only sounds I hear. Pain, such biting, stabbing, ripping, shredding, pulling, pain is all i feel as the sharp blade of a chainsaw grinds through my once thick skin. My beautiful white oak wood is rotten, damp, moldy. The saw slices through me and as I crack and fall, a small hand clasps my last seed and with a mighty snap, I am gone.

I am a seed.

My mother before me lived a long life and was a home to hundreds of beautiful animals, or so I’m told by the young girl who waters me every day. My mother died a heroic and beautiful and tragic death, but she stayed strong. Now it is my turn. I will grow. I will fight through this soil, and I will find the light. I will consume every drop of water that reaches my small roots and when I emerge through the heavy dirt I will soak in every drop, every ray, every beam of sunlight that falls upon my seedling face.

I am a seed.

And one day I will be taller than the willows, I will be stronger than the birches and I will rise to the heavens, touching the sky with my leaf covered branches, branches that birds and butterflies and squirrels and children call home. I will sink my roots deeper and deeper and deeper and deeper, pushing through the hard soil and making paths for small animals to travel through. My gardener talks to me daily and I suck in every one of her words that my small form can handle, her breath a refreshing wind that lifts my weary sprouts.

I am a seed.

And I will  press on and continue to grow, so that I, like my mother before, will become a tree.