Long listed for the 2023 Urban Tree festival writing competition
And they rise up enormous and majestic as only natural things can be. Peerless above the huddled houses, the cacophonic chaos of cars roads, tar and acred concrete, anathema to living things, to be circumvented by root. Gnarled massive arms reach for air, light and knowledge of each other. And in their mirror life of darkness below, language is spoken in filaments touching moistlike loving fingertips gentle urgings in the dirt. I claim them daily taking solace, this unbuilt church, seeking substance in a spinning world that rushes under my feet while they stand stoic, weathering the buffet and sway, the triviality of humanity. In the wind a universe of shivering leaves shushes like the sea pausing all other talk. Their pale summer trunks are smooth and heavy to touch as you’d imagine a planet to be. And I lean in to one, listening ear to outer bark through phloem and cambium, sapwood to heartwood, for the secret that time built inside.