A tree grew in the forest, alone and silent. The wind came and played each day among it's boughs and branches, but it could never find its own song.
In warm days and silver moonlit nights it lived there until it was old enough to start to bloom, and it was then that everyone started to take notice of it. They thought of the fine fruit that they could get from it, and what it could
do for them, for they were selfish to the core. The tree was beautiful to look at and it's shade
was the coolest, and most restful of all the trees
that grew there.
The day came when it grew up and bore all of
it's fruit and blushingly gave everything it had to offer. It made an immense display of leaves and blossoms, and as soon as it did, word spread like a wildfire, and men came to tear away it's fruit and watched and looked on as it's limbs fell away. They nodded approvingly. The blossoms slipped quietly to the forest floor. They slid down, gracefully dipping and gliding like a fluttering ballet dancer to a fatal end.
They ran roughshod over it, breaking it and making deep scars that bled its own life's liquid. It's petals and leaves fell like tears of mourning that streamed silently down the face of a mother for a lost child.
There was no gentle or delicate picking of it's fruit with tenderness and wonder, but they grabbed at it clumsily, and plucked at it and then they shook it violently. They kept hacking and cutting into it with saws and axes, until there was nothing left to give or to get.
It was all but dead, and it was shamed by it's loss and it's nakedness. It had nothing left to cover itself with.
The men loaded up everything that they had taken from it, and then went away with their wealth. They were almost gleeful and giddy from their happiness to have killed the tree, and they continued to revel in their never ending greed.
The children didn’t come anymore to play on it, or climb up as high as they dared. The older ladies dressed in pale colors and lovely hats did not picnic there in its shade. Young lovers no longer kissed among it's green leafy curtains, or carved their names inside of a heart on its trunk.
Some shed a quick tear, but thought no more
about it.
So once again it was left there, like a lonesome
tomb that was seldom visited.
They thought, ” We have surely killed it, so
let’s be happy now that we have what we
want. That tree was no good anyway and
we are better off without it taking up space
where we want and need to be," for they
desired prominence, and wanted and needed ... everything.
For years, a low stump sat as the only sad
reminder of it’s more lovely and splendid days. No one could see the stirrings of life still kept there, for they were hidden deep down below the soil and kept safe from the sight of those that meant to do it harm.
Then, one spring, a shoot started up from the soil, almost in secret it came up from the root, tentative and afraid. Soon it was joined by several more, and as they grew, side by side, and they became more beautiful together then when the tree stood alone and apart.
And so, as it grew up and up, higher and higher, as a collective, it came closer to the heavens then it had ever dared hope. Each sprout sheltered the next and so it grew. Now, it's blooms and fruit could never be reached or held in a man’s rough hands again, silenced, because it knew that although at one time it had been lovely but weak, now it was plain and not so pretty, but tall and invincible and the men knew it. They would never be able to kill it off completely, although they might try, ever and ever again, they gradually became afraid of it.
It would only spring up from another place, and another, abundant and luxurious, and stronger from the cutting.
A grove grew in the forest, and there was nothing like it to be found. When the wind came and exhaled among the leaves, it was like ~ a chorus.
~ Blossom ~
