The Tree’s Reprieve
She forgave her killer
A man of twenty-eight years bought a piece of land to farm. But there, in the middle of his future-plowed field, stood firmly a tree of over two-hundred years.
She lifted high, shading him in the summer heat. Her branches extended out wide and crooked. No human hands, especially of a human man, had ever trimmed her thick twig hair.
She had not had a fresh cut since a night in 2010. (A tree remembers these things.) Nature took its hands — lightning and wind — and broke an old limb from her torso. It had been rotten for the woodpecker, the squirrel, and the bugs burrowed holes in her bark skin.
She forgave them. A worthy sacrifice, she knew, was a sacrifice out of love — and yes, oh yes, did she love those burrowing fiends.
But this man she did not know. He stood on two feet and carried with him not strong fingernails or claws or a sharp beak.
Gripped tightly in the man’s hands was an ax, its metal head shiny in the morning sun.
The tree, hundreds of years old, readied herself to greet the man of twenty-eight years.
I can give you shade, she told him. I can give you kindling wood. In the spring, when my roots are heavy and wet, I’ll bloom fine flowers and leaves for you to admire.
