There's a tree outside my house.

There’s a tree outside my house.

It’s a big tree, an oak.

It has presence.

For a longtime I thought it was silent, but it is I who did not listen. The tree speaks. It speaks in waves as you walk past; waves which throb outwards like a stone striking a still pool. It’s unmistakable once you feel it. Sometimes the waves are strong. Does the tree track the waxing of the moon? Perhaps it follows the urge of an unknown tide from interstellar space. That would be neat.

The tree has a full-formed crown. It flourishes above my house and basks in the light. They shouldn’t have built so close. After all, the tree was here long before any builder eyed the land. This tree is hundreds of years old. Will we ever be done, destroyers of the garden? The tree was here when there was land, just land, low land flooded yearly by the great river, now hemmed in a mile away.

There’s a tree outside my house. Its canopy creates space, a cathedral, a clear, lucid, almost watery space filled with throbbing. No longer a child I want to live in its branches, to climb, to sit, to view the world and feel held its arms about me.

There’s a tree outside my house, a big tree.

I love her.