Lying on my back on the living room floor I can see, just outside the window, “my tree.” At least I see the bulk of it, bright green and yellow leaves, new to the breeze, soaking up the sun of late May.
The tree as it appears to me
The maple tree is twice the size it was when we moved into this place sixteen years ago, and now it fills the view out this second-story window. In the spring it floods the room with that soft light, a pale green melody that somehow reminds me of something by Delibes.
I practice my stretching exercises every day I remember to do it. Most exercises call for me to lie on my back, counting seconds or motions. The tree pulls my eyes then, for some reason. The constantly changing breezes move different branches, so the whole thing is a visual symphony of movement.
A month ago the branches were bare. Clouds, if any were visible through them, moved silently past. Most of the time back then, the sky was a uniform gray. I yearned for the coming of spring as I counted: twenty-seven, twenty-eight, twenty-nine …
A month from now, those leaves will be darker, a more uniform green. They will respond to the wind as they do now, but not with the subtle harmonies of color I see out there.
I know that in the fall the green will be replaced with a triumph of yellows, reds and golds, and then finally, brown. The leaves will wither, some curling into themselves before they drop to the ground. Then the tree will fall silent, except for a whisper of conversation with any wind that passes through. And I will wait again for spring. Twenty-seven, twenty-eight, twenty-nine …
I’ve thought of filming my tree from the window in different seasons, perhaps accompanying the video with music (Delibes?) It’s been a hobby of mine most of my life, visualizing something that caught my eye and mentally setting it to music that it reminds me of, the obverse to films like Walt Disney’s Fantasia that I watched in the 1940s, constructing animated visuals set to music. The perennial CBS-TV program Sunday Morning regularly ends with a few moments of nature video, unadorned and unaccompanied by voice or music. The effect is visual poetry.
The tree is too close to the house. Even now, in a sufficiently strong wind, it could topple our way and damage the building. Whoever planted it as a sapling did not consider the risk; the young maple must have stood proudly in the yard, yielding a few leaves at first, only promising shade for future summers.
Blue sky surrounds my tree as I gaze, with occasional puffy white clouds drifting past. When I finish my exercise, the tree becomes my object of focused attention as I allow my mind to meditate and my body to relax.
I’m keenly aware that the tree is alive, as alive as I am. The gentle movements of its leaves are as important to its life as my stretching exercises are to mine. As I near the end of my days, I think about the lifespan of that maple tree, as certain yet as unknown as my own. We are presented with a brief gift, one that each of us makes into what we can. Where that gift came from, I cannot guess.
I lie here, watching the tree in wonder.
