spirit tree

I am restless tonight and I can’t write-- a bad combination. I keep thinking about the man who led my daughter’s class on a nature walk a few weeks ago. How he kept saying "my people” and how I made my daughter and her friends go with him because his voice comforted me and I could tell he held great stories.

On the walk he made each of us eat a certain berry and stick out our tongues. We all looked at the different shades and he told us, how all bodies absorb things differently and this is what a good medicine man does, he pays attention to the color.

There was no shade to my tongue. I hold things in. There would be no way to know how to treat me….

I miss my house. I miss the trees we planted when each girl was born. I miss that I could name every flower from the front step to the back and that the turret is made of horse hair because the house is 200 years old and I loved it more than I loved my husband but not more than my mind.

Now I have my head and I plant nothing in this place the girls and I rent. I plant nothing because I can’t bear to watch it grow. And there is something beautiful in that too, though I want to be able to name it but I can’t.

The nature guide said the center of the Lynden tree holds a star, out of its emptiness it takes on the shape of the universe and that is why it is holy. He said, my people call it the spirit tree.