Day 94
limb
I love the expression “out on a limb.” It is how I feel I have lived most of my life. I love heights, and wind, so the idea of hanging by my knees, out at the edge of a great tree, swaying thirty feet above ground, and alone, is not necessarily a bad thing for me.
I like a little risk, and a good vantage point. Close to the trunk is shelter, structure, and all the advantages that come with being at the center of things. It’s crowded there though, all the branches running into each other, nests and skittering squirrels; moving as if they have a drug-induced craving for acorns.
Out on a limb, I see the other trees, the vast community of the forest, the sweeping horizon, the shifting sky, the rising, setting, warming, radiating sun. I feel exposed and raw, like a ship at sea. The tide is a wind, the wind is shifty and sometimes fierce. But the branch does not break, not often anyway.
In time, all things become dry and brittle. In time, all the boughs break. Dropped to the soft mulch below, I will grieve the loss of this vista, of this tenuous life out here on the edge of things; but God-willing, I will sink humbly into the dirt. Tree food.
