Voices

The old tree never talked to the human things, never once in the endless cycles of dark and light or the greater turns of buds and ice. They were disinclined to listen, so he had never considered it.

Oh, he had watched them scurrying through their lives, passing his place on their way to some other. He had watched them coming and going, building and unbuilding, rearranging the world and moving on. Little by little, they cleared the grove around him, taking the timbers of his fallen friends for ceaseless projects in the far away. His wood was too knotty and twisted for that purpose; so, in time, he stood alone with the smaller lives.

On quiet evenings when the breezes tickled his leaves, he listened to the rustle of the long grass and answered in his way. He shared his world with the soft moss and a tangle of weeds that sprouted up each spring. He knew their generations, untouched as he because they were equally insignificant to the men who remade the forest. In the fresh days of each new growing season when the sun warmed the soil at his roots, he welcomed the squirm of burrowers. Parades of tiny creatures would swarm over his bark from time to time, but as busy as they seemed, they saw him. They recognized the life in him, or at least he thought they did. Even the birds who stayed so briefly were truly there in his arms when they perched, not speeding their minds ahead to other destinations. Not so, the human things.

In time, men had covered the earth nearby with scars of concrete and steel, roared their metal constructs past at all hours, and still seemed oblivious to the world they passed through. None paused to see, to listen to the breathing of the green here. Burned bits of leftover tobacco and the tumble of plastic skins from their food were their only contribution...

until now.

The old tree had seen them come as the days grew short and dry. In their usual way, they had busied themselves with rearranging, digging, cutting, building some wooden structure to reassure themselves that this was no wild place now. Then, it all went quiet under a shroud of winter, and the old tree slept.

When a trickle of meltwater revived the earth, he saw the things had returned to dig in the soil and add new small lives to the grove. Though these new plants were strangers here, he was growing fond of the gentle pansies humans had placed at the foot of his trunk. He was pleased as well, that the workers came regularly to clear away their scraps although he thought they went too far removing the fallen leaves and sticks and trimming down the wildness of the grass. The grove was not the same as he remembered, but there was a sense that the humans had tried in their clumsy way to restore it.

But the biggest change was in the humans themselves. No more scurrying blindly past, they came in numbers now and slowed while they stayed. Humans were baring their feet to feel the soft cool grass. They were lying in the shade of his leaves and gazing at the sky in the spaces between his serpentine branches. They were playing and dancing and laughing, and for the first time, he thought a few of them might really see.

Now that the nights were warm, they brought their instruments to play under the stars. Those bits of dead wood and reed could come alive again with their gentle touch and speak. Resonant tones crept through the transformed grove, filling the spaces and finding their echoes in every living thing. Voices rose to ride the music, to soar timelessly in the sultry summer air and linger like sweet rain ready to fall. His weary heart sensed the hope in those melodies. For now, he'd rest and listen, but one day, he just might sing.