THE TREE

The Tree stood knurled and gnarly with great burly branches that curled like the furled brows of the surly timber men who rendered the forest wood for lumber in summer and, in winter, tinder burned from ember to cinder. But the Tree was so twisted that the woodsmen resisted cutting it, insisting it would be sadistic to enlist such a distorted shape into the midst of the village. Too fraught with knots to be swatted with the ax, the Tree was thought as naught, not sought to be wrought into firewood nor timber.

Until, at last, the forest passed; and in contrast, there stood the outcast Tree, unsurpassed and tall as a mast, basking in the sunlight of a vast meadow.

Johnkluttz19MAR2019