Flipbook trees

Wikimedia Commons

The grass tree came into the frame, neither a grass nor a tree. Yet. As quick as the wheels turn on the rails, it grew: now a gumtree peeling, standing naked for sun’s lusty heat; then a fern green, shyly learning ways of the worlds; here fallen, wrenched; there rising into a eucalyptus, perhaps a future home. When she blinked and perhaps because, it died a stone, a moment before it turned into a grass, a tree, and then both.

She left the rails. They sit there inviting her to continue its time. Not now, she whispered to not one. At the empty space, she waits to see how the grass tree grows, off the track.

The flower fulled,
a moment larger.
Was it the bloom I knew?