May 15th, 2018

Unknown

Bits of broken tombstone surround the tree of life, jagged little reminders that all monuments someday crack and crumble.

A speck-like spider falls from the tree of life onto my pale hand. Before it has a chance to find its own way home, I send it to the land of wet grasses on a gust of self-generated wind. I have never cared for spiders, however minuscule.

I count no less than twenty shards of gravestone and wonder if the tree of life is to blame. The tree of life, grown so large from all the now-quiet bodies if hovers over while under the bone-infested ground, the roots of life seek water.

I spy no faces upon the tree of life’s cracked and ornery skin. I only spy black ants and sick-yellow lichens.

Are the faces then underground with the roots or perhaps higher up on the trunk, well above eye-level, spied only by wandering drones or a telescoping eye from a nearby window? Are the faces then in the branches, obscured by oblique leaves?

Perhaps the tree of life has no faces at all…

Perhaps the tree of life is just a dis-envisaged voice repeating so slowly, “So happy now you’ve gone.”

And what then for us still left to hear?

What new lessons do we have to share?