Being the Tree

How many times have I passed this old oak, caressed its craggy bark and velvet moss, wondered what it would feel like –   to  be  this tree.   For a day, a year, a century.

From fragile young shoot vulnerable to pests, to struggling sapling prey to deer, to vigorous adolescent invincible and insouciant, to robust young adult casting the next generation, to wise old one,  to ancient one… 

To be inside and feel my feet become roots and explore the soil,  to feel my arms become branches, leaves, limbs, a crown.    To feel my bark develop armour and shield me from ravages.   To grow a beard of moss and fern and invite in all manner of minuscule guests.    To make a home for birds in my hair and foxes in my seat. 

To feel my veins fill with sap and rise to my extremities, to feel my organs prickle with chemical messages from far flung family, alerting me to oncoming dangers.   To feel my leaves absorb sunlight.   To feel my lungs expand with delicious carbon dioxide, and release that oxygen others find so precious.  

To fling my children to the soil and birds and wind.   They become my wings and my legs and I travel.              I move, evolve, survive. 

Humans look at me and wonder about my age.   If they had ears to hear I would tell them I am ignorant about Time.   It is our essence to connect and so we live forever.    Day, season, millenium – what does that mean when you are eternal?   

If a friendly human should rest against me on a winter day, I could offer an abundance of soft moss.

And perhaps an abundance of time.    For on rare occasions I might even whisper our magic.   People might doze,  dream…   And in their dreams they might become the tree.  

And for a moment, inside the tree, they too might know eternity.