Maple Tree: Ruminations on Absence and Nature’s Healing (writing to a prompt)
by Kim Hester Williams
I wonder what Maple is thinking about my absence. I wonder if she has noticed that I don’t live there anymore. Has she felt it? My absence? Has she missed my adoration and longing to be one with her as I admire her grandeur while I carefully—and joyfully—water the patch of succulents and remove the wayward bark pieces from the concrete driveway ushering them back to their barkmates resting peacefully as they protect the surrounding trees and bushes?
I wonder if Maple ever noticed the disdain, the distance and air of dismissiveness inside the walls of that surrounding abode. Could she hear the crying, the yelling, and the flagrant disregard permeating every molecule of 228? That house, not herself spiteful, and not as magnificent as you, Maple, but rather, serving—unwillingly—as a receptacle of rage. A container for grief. An adobe penitentiary where irreconcilable differences festered to the point of resentment that made its own garden and place within a place, a prison of discontentment and broken-ness. Could you sense the heavy-ness, the weight of being worn and torn and utterly lost but then, somehow, found? Were you aware of any of this? The darkness, visible but hidden. The light fading and fading into the ether of disaffection and deep, deep despair. Did you feel me giving up… and letting down after being let down and let go? Did you know about my waywardness and the pain creeping around every crevice of the not spiteful 228?
And then I wonder, were you aware of my leaving, Maple? Did you notice the carloads of books and bags and clothes and shoes and the black chair and its accompanying ottoman that our avid botanist gardener —who insisted and persisted on getting you a proper trimming while he carped, “maple trees need to be trimmed or they will grow out of control,” as he helped me cart my things away? Could you feel my sadness that day, Maple? I was disappointed to leave you, the one who I had so many times found refuge with and tried to imitate—your stalwart stance, strength, steadfastness, peace. Your irreverence through each season and your ability to withstand extreme climate change: heat, drought, and massive unrelenting rainstorms, not to mention the cold and frost and cyclical loss of your leaves—over and over—only to return again… and again… again. And again. Every time without fail, and so eloquently, seamlessly, without complaint and without falter.
As for me, I will not return. In your absence from my life, and in my absence from you, my memories of your grand nature and healing will most certainly remain.
PROMPT:
“The maple tree in my front yard tells the silent story of the passing seasons.”
~ First line in Autumn Song: Essays on Absence by Patrice Gopo
