The well worn road was paved black. We’d decided to take a mile walk just because. The gentle sun didn’t blaze hot that day. It was warm and comfortable, not intrusive. The tree lined road ahead seemed long. The light wind swayed leaves. We talked and laughed and shared ideas, laughing at the ones that were ridiculous but fun to entertain. We gazed at houses, pointing at the ones we thought were worthy to live in. No turtles or cats crossed the road. Only us and the leaves crossed. They blew across as though looking both ways before moving. Maybe they looked for us as well.
The uprooted tree was unexpected. Its soul lay bare for anyone intuitive enough to feel its pain. It no longer had a place in the soil. It was cut and ripped from its home, left on the side of the road, exposed. I wondered what life it had lived and how many decades it had seen. Was it around for a war? Did it see settlers to the town? Was it the home of birds, squirrels, bugs and other life that needed a place to settle down for the night? Did it bear offspring from its many seeds that scattered at its base or floated through the wind, seeking a place to land? Where did the wind carry its lineage? To the other side of the forest? To distant shores? Did it cry out in pain, across time and space, when the saw that tore through its flesh ended its decades of life with a loud thud upon the soil? Its memories were fresh, its pain palpable. We were kindred in that moment of passing, connected by memories and a deep sense of knowing. We both remembered.
I too was uprooted from a past that was rich with history and life. My roots were torn from the earth and tossed aside as though insignificant and irrelevant, a history to be forgotten. I lay on the edge of time, cut down, hoping that I could someday be replanted, regrown. But the wounds are too deep. Very little grows from such deep rooted destruction. All that grows is the longing for what was lost. We long together for what we are able to remember; our roots. We reach for the sun across the sky, for the stars, for a past that will never return.