How trees tell time. |
THE BRANCHES IN THE TREETOPS March 19, 2005 The branches in the treetops touch the sky while, down below, the boughs sway above a pair of energetic jeans and an old faded T-shirt as summer brings the children to their favorite tire swing. These branches hold the invisible tell-tale marks of rubber tread above which is shoe-laced, and, higher up, giggled and bubblegum-popped. Against the trunk of this irresistible tree are the intangible hand prints of youth which are doubling in size by the year. Birds sing in these limbs when the children are not around and they squawk and carry on, jumping, dipping, soaring, and squabbling among the million drooping leaves. Dogs play at the foot of this tree and run around the trunk like bees around a flower. The wind sweeps the grass below and dusts its leaves and tosses them around so the sun and the shadows can look at them respectively. The leaves will fall, but more will grow and the children will bring children of their own to swing with their own dogs at their sides that will run and play and leave, like the others before them, deserting limbs for the birds while the branches in the treetops touch the sky. |