Naked Tree, Remember Me

I have a petition for you. I hope you will forgive the impertinence of this request.

I’ve come to you this morning, walking the forsaken paths, footsteps against the craggy ice. My face is veiled, and my wet breath clings to me. Twice I’ve fallen, my feet betraying me, and nigh again.

Now my knees bend, your bare branches covering my head. Here your high body rises from the frozen land receding around the circle described by your reach, the withered fruits of your good days preserved in their earthen encasing, mixed with the crumbling solid snow. 

Dear Tree, please remember me.

Remember me, when you come into the Kingdom.

Remember me, when the cold is confined to its right place, when a permanent spring arrives, carrying the heraldry of the coronation of the Lord of the lands. Then the little birds will sing with words, sharing the sky. Even the broken stones of the ruined cities will take up their lofty mountain siblings’ shout, that the Messiah has returned.

Brother Tree, remember me, for the kingdom is of you. For you were called to secure the dry land against the boundaries of the lower seas. Late on the Third Day your ancestors received their domain, and rather than fading into legendary time, only a few junctures on the Tree of Life have mediated between your sapling ascent and the first dawn.

For the Jinn of the East and the Elves of the West have been named by my mortal ancestors, who from the wild-lands’ crabbed and fickle hands pried the sighs of death and life. When cruel Nature with her reedy voice ensnared the hide-bound footsteps of the dawn treaders, their dying gasps stirred the dust they returned to, and from the displaced earth arose the shapes of nymph and dryad, faërie and leshy and sidhe. These spirits of the primal Forest walked with the near descendants of Enoch, whose isolated longing was shared by the specters, while mortal dread wore your unchanging harmony. Thus we designed our elder brethren, and you lead us to our dreams.

But as long ere humanity’s first breath the elder forests grew in God’s sight, so you have ever remained—when the full corpus of human endeavors has been measured by its weight in timber, when the contorted remnant of the Machine has seized in comingled smoke and fog, when the great Wheel has spun off its axel and fallen into the Void, then the trees of the primary creation will by patient ascent reach eternity.

Then the King will walk down the highway maintained by mountain and forest, and so one day will step into this hollow. Therefore, my friend, I beg you to carry my mark, secured safely in your trunk, so that you may express my words to the Word Himself, although they are murky.

Naked Tree, remember me to God.

Remember that I existed, called out from Adam’s abashed lineage.

Remember my agonized examinations of forbidden sky and trodden ground.

Remember the home where I grew to be a man, between tree and stream.

Remember how my parents loved me, how their tribe came to be here within these aging Young Shores, where folk from all four lands have come to build houses.

Remember how I walked the river paths, from west to east and back again.

Remember how I loved the old tall tales and their little young, how I found them all contained within the old blue hymnal from the rack on the back of the pew by the side-aisle, when the sanctuary was still. 

Remember how I feared the lack of need. Remember how I trembled at the laughter that echoed from stained yellow linoleum floors, which the glowing green stars could never reach.

Surely you do remember our good Earth, and this old and weather-beaten sod, our homeland. Please also remember my people.

Remember our fathers. Remember how they struggled to build upon this cold sod. Remember their poverty and their earnest rejoicing at the first foundation, before their pride.

Remember my father, and my grandfather, and his father before him. Remember how we used our small name to transnavigate valley falls, carrying obsolete calling cards to the silent generation.

Remember my mothers. Remember women who dared to live, though weeping in this valley of impossibility, bearing innocence in their arms though stabbed by sorrow through the heart. Remember how they continued giving until the docile hour of death.

Remember my grandmother, whom this last bygone year I lowered into this earth.

My fingers are stiff like the freezer sticks we sucked on her patio, ensheathed in frigid drained casings.

Flexing stiff joints, I numbly thumb open my father’s pocketknife. My breath mists on the stainless steel blade as I hold it before my blue eyes.

Dear tree, please accept this hypocrite’s mark. This small aperture in your flesh contains the symbol of cold iron, hammered into the wide embrace of your famous kinsman’s blade-wounded horizon-span.

I am not reconciliation of Law to Will. Rather, I’m a colloidal mixture of cowardice and exaggerated judicial care. I am not a word-sword, flying out from the mouth of Eternity to hack the mangy fruit of soul off of the untamed vine of spirit, or to uproot it from the soil of perception. I’m a page of the sleeping knight, attending by midnight the ghosts of insubstantiation while by day trudging through the snowstorm to catch the bountiful monarch. I am not a martyr, giving heart-blood to fertilize the flower garden in the baron uncle’s manor.

Memory retains medallions stamped by the imprint of possibility, corroded by the green tinge of the other sun. Grander landscapes await my little cousins, who will use old maps to discover a new valley and may conquer the highlands beyond. Here your long shadow points the way to a land beyond yesterday’s frost, promising that the days are lengthening. Please lend me your barren serenity.

Remember my dream of the Rood.

Voice narration:

The text content of this work, as well as the audio recording, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.