A Matter of Life and Trees

There they stand. Monoliths of bark and of leaf and of root. They stretch over the gate, a barbican of living tissue, their limbs intertwined in some perverted lovers embrace. Birds walk the upper branches, strutting back and forth, goose stepping like a Russian parade screaming and calling and shitting at will.

They grow relentlessly. Like the glacier ponderously crawling across the landscape these entity’s grow, taller, wider. The fence, their boundary, stretches, cracks, fails. When the wind howls they creak and groan and the storms clash their branches together with a crack like a biker’s chains striking the road.  Their limbs tear free, the thunder as they strike the ground is a giant’s foot stamping the Earth. Leaves fall like rain, the ground covered with a sheet of green and brown shapes.

Yet they stand, stripped bare of bark, naked of leaf barren branches poke towards the sky like the fingers of some frozen hag.

And I toil beneath them. The peasant, the slave to their will. They drop a branch and I race to remove it, they shed a leaf and I watch it whirl to the ground, twirling like a wounded helicopter stuck in the terror of a torque driven spin, and when it strikes the ground I am there with rake and bag to fetch their waste, the detritus of their living.

Like a good lord they provide me with shelter and shade and yet their wrath strikes hard, unexpected, unforgiving. They lash at what I possess, shatter glass and structure with equal impunity. To their towering might I am like the buzzing of flies to them. A gnat, some twisted grub.

All things have their weaknesses, but I think and ponder and wonder and I can find no hope to free myself from the grip they have on me. I am the rabbit in the snare. Trapped, waiting helplessly for death to take me to free me from the iron grip they have about me.

I will die before them, they are eternal. They were here before me and will be around long after I am dead unless I act. Unless I do something to halt their reign over me. Together they are too much, too strong.

But alone. What are they alone? Megaliths of woody flesh. Stab them and do they not bleed. I can’t do this by myself; there must be others who are lorded over by such silent, towering masters. I must find them, organise them. Rebellion. Insurgence. They will fall. All empires come to an end. Their days are numbered.

Drop your leaf, shed your bark. Do all as you now can for you will not do it for long. I have a plan.