Time is what keeps us here. We are seasons. We are seeds under the snow, shooting out branches, then leafing out then producing the bud that opens in the heart. Yet time is what we have created for ourselves, for all happens within time. Within winter the leaves fall away, the beauty is hidden for a time until the sun comes in spring, bringing warmth to the soil and process once more of unfoldment of the life within budding out.

Each year the tree puts down more root and shoots out higher until full maturity comes with many seasons, and this is like reincarnation for the tree.

Those branches bereft of leaf? For all appearance to the eye, it is dead. Yet looking with x-ray vision there is life sap there awaiting the right time to blossom. A little clock ticks within the sleeping root. Is it 2006? Or is this year what the humans call 2007?

I have forgotten sleepily speaks the root to itself. No matter, my life span I cannot count. I am only life itself and as such I count not my years, nor measure them with meaning as the humans do. I am rhythm like the sea tides, like the sun and moon and planets revolve, I do also, this, to move imperceptibly within time.

I find contentment to snuggle into the soil and sleep within my rhythm. One will come to admire my bud and gain hope from it, for they alone, the humans do count the hours until I bloom–so I sleep until then. I will be attended by fairies and elementals who will awaken me when it’s time for action. My bud is pink, but my family member’s carry purple genes and it is good for we complement one another.

I speak with the walnut tree nearby, asking it how it came to touch the sky? It smiles upon me that I should admire it and speaks only there must be small so that large can be. “Nonetheless says large leaf walnut, which can feel the sun’s warmth even before I should, you shall be several feet taller before you know it, then we shall spread our arms further, and offer protection for the human who needs us and knows it not.

We will ward off biting winds and hail and give shade and fruit and nut and the humans would moan and lament had they not us to sit beneath and dream, and they give us not regard even, but we know, we know our purpose. We will whisper hug us..hug your tree..For the minute we are gone or cut down or sleep in soil, then the humans tear of yearning is required to awaken us once more and we would know only their laughter awaiting patiently, our virtue, to experience their regard for we are one with the human for better or worse, being married to the soil, and that is our wisdom we allow them to learn from us.”_