Ugly Tree

The Ugly Treeby Darmok 12/2/01The ugly tree fell today. I stared out my window in amazement. The night siege of God’s cleansing breath, had finally passed over my yard, and I spoke a silent amen. The tree I had so often cursed during the spring, even as she bore her nursery of flowers, I knew each winter she would bear that god awful fruit that would cover the yard and the walk beneath her scrawny branches. Hundreds of gum-ball sized spheres, uneatable to say the least, lay everywhere you’d care to walk. This was a dauntless game we played,a chore really, the weekly task of raking up this mass of leaves and wicked berries. Every so often as I raked and cursed her, promising I would cut her down next year, I would take a stick of hers and scrape the mass of smushed berries clinging to my shoes, wondering if she were begging me or mocking me. Yes, next year, I would secretly remove her and in her place put a beautiful maple or a silver spruce. The city wouldn’t have to know, but as each winter rolled past and she stood bare reveling in her ugliness, it didn’t seem that I cared one way or the other. I relegated the thought to next year.So today the ugly tree fell. This is good I thought, what next should be done? I’d have to call someone, no, I could take care of it myself, this is an answer to my prayers I thought. Everything would be all right. I’d pull out the tools and cut back the tree fall from the street and stack the wood. I could always use another cord or half to burn next winter.The chain saw was a mess though, forgot about that. I’d used it this past summer and the chain had come off the bar just as I had finished with another tree I had set my eyes upon. Another tree down, only someone had deliberately ripped this one from her footing, plans for construction and new homes I guess, she was only in the way. So...I was really just doing someone a favor then. This morning it was too cold and still so wet, the early morning was still brewing with teasing blasts of wind and light rain. I sized up the task and looked at her laying on her side, musing over the fact that she had barely missed the neighbor’s car. I guess I thanked her for that. Her passing was quiet during the night, disturbing no one. No midnight pounding at my door as neighbors in their shorts and robes frantically sought my sleepy audience, informing me with mournful banter, that 'our tree had fallen', and there below, a slightly more compacted ‘compact’, lay their car. No...so this musing sigh passed and I got dressed, eager to inspect the dying beast laying helplessly, no where to go. Severed from mother earth, her future was bleak, for surely she would soon know the chipper's hunger.Bundled up and armed with my three foot pruning shear, I neared the fallen conifer. It was a clean kill, snapped at the root of the trunk. The bed of bulbs that circled her seemed undisturbed, a small distraction I know, nevertheless I still wondered about them. Would they have to be moved? Halfway into the street she lay. The might of her weight brought her down, and in one last effort to reproduce, she cast hundreds of unborn beneath her and away from her only to lay to waste. These pods of squishy fruit would be ran over several times before the days end. They would again cake at the bottom of my soles as I did the deed, cutting her, pruning her to clear the street enough, for traffic to slip by. Each one of the passing cars, took a gander at her unfortunate demise paying respect or cursing her too. You see, they all had the same tree in their yards.It would take time, but all that would be left of her picked over carcass, would be the back bone of her body, the trunk. Her spilled fruit would lay waste, mixed in the growing puddles of water that would soon flood the street and carry her cocktail of death away, that is if the drain could bear another 2 inches of rain fall. First one cut, then the next, it seemed at first no progress was being made. Little did I know she was talking to me with each snap of another limb. Every cut took several foot pound of pressure to cut through to her, to reveal her body. Pruning away her limbs I could not help but feel the guilt, she was so helpless. At least each summer as I stood higher and higher on the ladder, she would test my endurance, my skill, to reach higher into the ugly tree, and reach the branches of ugly fruit I desired. That is, to cut away from her living body, more and more of the unsightly nonconformity of what I thought a beautiful tree should look like. In the summer ritual, she could at least strike back, cause me to fall as I had one year before. Higher up on the ladder as I sawed through a larger branch, I lost my balance and tipped the scales, I fell. Only she caught me ever so tenderly in the pile of pruned twigs and leaves that broke my fall. I thanked her, and cursed her the same. So you see, I finished the deed. Hacked away her limbs and fruit and piled them again along side the curb to wait for the men to come. Men in machines that would take her away and grind her still into smaller pieces. Just fragments of what she once was, you know, the ugly tree. Ugly she may have been, she was still alive, struggling to survive my ritual onslaught, trying to grow, just trying to make the best of her ugliness, live. Beneath her trunk lay a grave bed of bulbs, in between her severed roots. Roots I had hacked and cut, to make room for the pretty tulips of spring. I was guilty of something for sure. Had my curses weakened her spirit, had she fallen under the weight of humility I poured upon her as I looked onto her in disgust? Had I mocked her beauty, her spring, as I crushed the fruit she bore? Did I cut her heart out and plant flowers for her grave, did I kill her? She yielded in the night silently slipping away, alone in the rain she lay cold and rejected. Covered by the dark of night she lay in shame, the ugly tree was not to blame.Her short lived blooms of snow flake fairies won’t grace my yard this spring. Her voice won’t sail away the wind, nor petals bloom or sing. Returned to earth her body will, perhaps someday a bag will fill. Composts made of her flesh and ugliness, in spring the tulips will bloom and touch us.I am sorry I cursed her, she was only what God had made her, a tree.This is both a story, a poem, a comment on social acceptance. The tree is real, the conversation was in my heart. I am afraid tho if I don't plant a tree myself, the city will put in 'another ugly tree'. This one won't bother me as much :) And I will not curse her. Written December 2nd, 2001 © on Dec 02 2001 04:43 AM PST, Darmok    0 • 9