57 everyday things, re-seen by an old tree.
They have hung paper the color of new leaves from my lowest branch, and beneath it the walking ones gather in a loose ring the way starlings gather…
Read observation → The Old Tree Out in the worldThe ground has been trembling since dark, a low steady heartbeat pushed up through my roots from the crumbling brick building beside me, and I have…
Read observation → The Old Tree Out in the worldOne morning the walking ones came before the light did, which is the wrong order, and stood pressed together outside a lit box of a building, breathing…
Read observation → The Old Tree Out in the worldEvery year, near the shortest light, one of the warm houses at my roots fills all at once, the way a nest fills, and the walking ones come from far…
Read observation → The Old Tree KitchenThere is a small heavy cup at the roots of the wide plastic slab where the two of them sit each morning, and it is the same warm brown as the underside…
Read observation → The Old Tree Out in the worldThey have buried a den beneath my roots, the burrowing ones, though they came late to it, only this spring, with their loud digging animals that bit at…
Read observation → The Old Tree HomeA little box beside the mouth of the burrow the walking ones have built, and it sings when they wish to be let inside their own shelter.
Read observation → The Old Tree Out in the worldTwo of them arrived at different times, which is how I have always known them: never in step, one waiting under my lowest branch, pretending to study…
Read observation → The Old Tree Out in the worldThey came in the dark clothes again, the way they do when one of them has stopped, and they stood beneath me in that slow clump that means someone is…
Read observation → The Old Tree Out in the worldThis year the little ones come dressed as animals, which is the first sensible thing they have done under me in a decade.
Read observation → The Old Tree Out in the worldTwo of them are trying to become one creature before they are separated, and it will not work, though I admire the attempt.
Read observation → The Old Tree Out in the worldThere is a small room at the base of the walking creatures' shelter where they gather to make heat and smell, and one of them has stood in it so many…
Read observation → The Old Tree Out in the worldFour of the walking ones have gathered in my shade this afternoon, arranged in a loose ring on the grass, and I have decided I like them, the way I…
Read observation → The Old Tree Out in the worldThis year they have filled the flat-roofed building across the road all at once, the way starlings fill me some Octobers, a sudden noisy crowd that…
Read observation → The Old Tree Out in the worldTwo of the walking ones stopped under my south limbs today, in that hot flat clearing they have paved where nothing grows, and one of them held a small…
Read observation → The Old Tree Out in the worldThe children come to be frightened, which is a season I have learned to wait for, the way I wait for the cold that follows the last red leaf.
Read observation → The Old Tree Out in the worldThey have built a room for staying that is full of people who cannot bear to stay in it.
Read observation → The Old Tree Out in the worldThe music stopped a while ago, which for me is only a change in the small vibrations that travel up through my roots from their lit-up nest.
Read observation → The Old Tree HomeThere is a small green thing in the room past my roots, held up above the soil in a hard cup that will never let it drink deeply, and I have watched…
Read observation → The Old Tree Out in the worldTwo of them beneath me since the light was thin and low, and now the sun has swung a full hand's width across the grass and still they have not gone.
Read observation → The Old Tree HomeThe two of them are sorting cloth again, on the grass by my western root, the way their kind has sorted cloth in my shade through more summers than I…
Read observation → The Old Tree KitchenThere is a small hot box on the counter of the house that shares my western light, and every evening the walking ones open its little door, set…
Read observation → The Old Tree Out in the worldThey have strung small hard lights inside my neighbor the gymnasium, and the walking ones have come in their good clothes to stand very still against…
Read observation → The Old Tree HomeOne of them dragged a bright cold pond in through the roots of my shade this spring and stood it against my trunk, upright, which is not how ponds behave.
Read observation → The Old Tree Out in the worldThey came in the warm season, the loud ones, more of them than my roots have counted in any single evening, and near a stage that shook the air they…
Read observation → The Old Tree Out in the worldThey have brought the whole meadow indoors, or rather brought the indoors out to me: a wall of sound with legs, a black tower taller than my lowest…
Read observation → The Old Tree Out in the worldThey gather in the narrow gut of the loud place, the walking ones, pressed shoulder to shoulder along a wall that sweats, waiting for a small door to…
Read observation → The Old Tree On youTwo small warm creatures came to rest against my roots today, shed from the feet of a walking one who lay back in my shade and closed his eyes.
Read observation → The Old Tree Out in the worldThey set the flat wooden thing down between my roots the same spring a small quick one first sat there, and she sat there many afternoons after,…
Read observation → The Old Tree Out in the worldThey poured a hot black skin over the field, and now nothing grows there but the walking creatures' hard-shelled beasts, which arrive in the morning…
Read observation → The Old Tree KitchenThere is a cold white cupboard humming in the corner of the room where the small ones eat, and it is the only thing in there that never sleeps.
Read observation → The Old Tree Out in the worldThe walking ones have made a door that goes nowhere and comes back, and they step into it one at a time, in the little glass wedge, and are carried…
Read observation → The Old Tree Out in the worldThey have arranged themselves in a ring beneath my lowest branches, palms flat on a small table, and they are trying, with great effort and low voices,…
Read observation → The Old Tree Out in the worldThere is a small quick creature living against the far wall of the market that has grown at the edge of my western roots these last forty summers, and…
Read observation → The Old Tree On youThey come to me every evening now, this small warm one and the tall one, and they cannot get into their own den.
Read observation → The Old Tree On youThe small one has dropped a strip of white bark at my roots, thin as birch skin and printed with the marks the walking ones make to remember, and the…
Read observation → The Old Tree HomeThe small one has stood inside falling rain for the length of a birdsong, though there is no cloud, and the rain is warm, and it comes from a single…
Read observation → The Old Tree Out in the worldA knot of walking creatures gathered in my shade this warm night, all of them wearing small glowing shells clamped over their ears, and every one of…
Read observation → The Old Tree Out in the worldThey have wheeled the small hard chairs into my neighbor's window across the street, a whole row of them, and each one holds a human who pedals and…
Read observation → The Old Tree Out in the worldA small warm one came and sat against my south root today, the good one, the one that has held its shape through nine winters, and she pointed the…
Read observation → The Old Tree Out in the worldThe little hard-shelled ones have stopped moving beneath me, hundreds of them, nose to tail in the two grey rivers the walking creatures poured across…
Read observation → The Old Tree KitchenIt stands at the edge of my shade and hums, a bright cold trunk that has never once needed the sun.
Read observation → The Old Tree Out in the worldThe little one has come to sit against my roots again, holding the flat lit thing to its ear, and for the length of a single held breath its face goes…
Read observation → The Old Tree Out in the worldThey have put out the folding chairs beneath me again, two clean rows of them, all facing the same young pair, and I have felt this exact arrangement…
Read observation → The Old Tree Out in the worldThe small ones who gather beneath my north side no longer bring their whole voices, only faces bent toward the bright leaves they hold in their palms.
Read observation → The Old Tree Out in the worldThey have come to my hillside to learn how to stand still, and this is the first time I have wanted to laugh in the language of leaves.
Read observation → The Old Tree Out in the worldBefore light, the little walking ones gather at the edge of the great glass field where no roots can reach, and they wait to be carried away from the…
Read observation → The Old Tree HomeTwice now, in the dark before the light comes back over the eastern field, the small square thing in the room I lean against has begun to shriek, and…
Read observation → The Old Tree Out in the worldThere is a small bright room in the tall stone that swallows the walking creatures and then, a breath later, they are gone, gone straight up into the…
Read observation → The Old Tree On youOne of the small ones stood beneath me in the grey wet today, and rather than lift her face to the rain the way any sensible living thing does, she…
Read observation → The Old Tree Out in the worldOne of the small warm ones is still awake beneath me, in the hour the owls own, when even the wind has lain down in the grass to rest.
Read observation → The Old Tree Out in the worldA small one stopped in my shade this morning and did not move for the length of a bird's whole song, which for these quick creatures is a very long…
Read observation → The Old Tree Out in the worldA small warm one has come to the walking creatures again, and they hold it the way a squirrel holds the first acorn of a doubtful autumn, with both…
Read observation → The Old Tree Out in the worldThere is a small one at my feet today, folding its whole nest into boxes, and I have seen this before, though never quite this one.
Read observation → The Old Tree Out in the worldThere is a small warm creature trembling in the arms of a walking one, here in my shade on this bench where so many have sat before, and the walking…
Read observation → The Old Tree Out in the worldThere is a young one asleep on the floor of a box in my line of sight, in a room that holds nothing else, and I have been watching the square of window…
Read observation → The Old Tree Out in the worldThey came out to me at midday, the whole warm swarm of them, and stood in my shade the way they have not stood together since summer.
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