Passenger
7:41 PM, While slipping thin batteries into my complementary Maglite flashlight, I thought about the stone tree. Rock-a-bye...
Outside my window, the storm is a rushing whisper accented by snaps of blue-white. Cracks and growls of thunder hint at the possibility of the lights flickering and then going dark. Hence my flashlight and the fact that I’ve shut down my computer for the night. I’m sipping Merlot and scratching away in my notebook. Paper and pen, don’t you know.
Yesterday, as a passenger, I saw a tall stone wall built of huge age-darkened blocks -- the kind of imposing slabs that ancient castle keeps might be assembled of. At one point in the twenty-foot high barrier a heavy stone had fallen free, revealing dusty earth. From that rectangular hole grew a tree as thick as my arm. The tree jutted out horizontally for a bit and then almost turned a right angle and went vertical. Reaching toward the sky.
I wondered at the symbolic meaning, if any, as the car swept me by.
Now the storm is muttering to itself -- its former vigor reduced to distant rumbles and vague wet sounds. In the distance, the fire alarm siren is wailing. The sound is stridently-plaintive. Sort of cold.
--- JWR, 10/13/99