Tree

This is what I call a “prose vignette,” or a miniature story in a snapshot. This story is one near and dear to my heart, as I had a Willow Tree once. And like the villagers, it served as an emblem for me, too. So enjoy the vignette. May you find hope in it today.

Tree

It was a nice life, a little life, of unusual goodness and green knolls and flowering hearts in the western nook of the province. I used to run the dusty streets, barefoot and free, and as I ran, I always looked to the western slope, for there she stood, regal and beautiful as a chiseled jewel, The Willow of the West.

 She was like a castle on a hill – a haven for birds and beasts who rested in the sanctuary of her waving walls. Her leaves adorned her like strands of shaved Jade, tinkling and whispering in the wind.

Beneath her ran a brook, clear as glass, that watered a bed of violets trailing along the bank. In the wind, she leaned over and touched it with her graceful hands, sketching shapes in the cool water. Her roots ran deep, deep into the soil of damp earth. She was our Queen of the Hill.

 And then, then one day when I was grown, the land was conquered by brigands – people of the sword and full of hatred for all things good. Their clothes were black and stained with the blood of ancient wrongs, and the weapons they carried calloused their hearts more than their hands. When the next day dawned, the whole village watched as the chieftain took his ax, gleaming and sharp, and hewed down our Queen. We sunk to our knees, wailing as we watched her fall, fall, fall into the trickling brook. He drowned her there, sodden and oozing sap into the riverlet’s slow trickle. It was an act of evil, and I vowed to repay it.

 So as dusk turned shadow into darkness, when the moon shone silver on the water and the form of our Willow lay lifeless, I carved out the wood from her wounded side, and in the sleeping hours I worked – worked with bleeding fingers and wood-dusted hands – to fashion a glorious cradle.

 Now my babe will sleep in the soft, silent embrace of the tree who stood for us, and fell with us. Our Queen’s heartbeat will pulse in her people as she holds our young close, and we will yet look to her, our Willow of the West.