On my balcony, I am at eye level with the top of a 20’ tall tree.
It is winter – well, March – and it has no leaves.
{Wandering minds want to know:
Is the tree embarrassed when it loses all its leaves?
Do the other trees laugh and make fun of it?
anyway, back to the story…}
It is almost Spring, and this tree is absolute potentiality.
Behind it, across the street, is an evergreen of about the same height.
Ever. Green.
It doesn’t know what it is to not have leaves;
to be barren and dormant.
It strikes me that there are people like this, people I know well.
The evergreens are steady and grounded and sure;
they change, but in slow and small ways.
I am decidedly not an evergreen.
I’m the tree that is a slave to the seasons.
