The Leaning Tree

There is an old tree, gray and cracked, on the steep embankment of a road long abandon and forgotten. The roots still hold fast to what little earth they can, borrowing into the black soil that once spawned life. Gripping, reaching, clawing to find a cleft, a rock, another’s root to hold on to. Something, anything to keep you upright. A final stand in a futile battle in a war long lost. Alone and dying, you sit, waiting for the end of a life that must seem by far too short. You were neither the tallest tree in the forest nor the strongest, but you were happy. The sun shone and you had purpose. A part of something, though you could not fully comprehend what.

Now, a shadow of your former self, I feel compelled to hold you up. Restore you to a former glory I never had the privilege to see. If I had the strength, the will, the fortitude to bare such a burden. Yet I cannot. For side by side we stand, tangent to the earth. Parallel, reaching to the sky. When a strong wind rages, you will fall and I will follow. I will take this final journey with you, my brother, my twin. We shall be as we were in the beginning. As we were for all our lives. Identical in our birth and life and so to in our death.