T.A.Young
There are some differences between humans and trees, a few significant, others minor. An example of the minor is that humans ambulate. What follows is an example of the significant, which is their sound.
Imagine filling a room with the kind of acoustics intended to make dramatic amplification, as in a cathedral or philharmonic, with one thousand random humans from around this particular planet all talking at the same time. All making their sounds, none listening: an attribute unique to humans: vestigial ears.
Now imagine the same place filled with one thousand random trees also from around this particular planet and they, too, are speaking simultaneously, making their sounds. As for listening: trees are always listening. If you sit on a rock and watch a tree, summer or winter, you will see its concurrent stillness and its motion; you will see its consideration and acceptance of every breeze and vibration.
It is the difference between cacophony and symphony. It is the difference between human dread and Nature’s knowledge of Immortality. By the way, there’s this guy named Wordsworth: he got it. Rabbit loves his stuff. He’d ask, “The whole rising and setting thing: ‘Heaven lies about us’! How come he gets it and everyone else is walking into walls?”
Elephant asked, “Why does he say ‘meanest flowers’? I don’t know any mean flowers. Except maybe Daphne The Twinflower. She’s mean. I wonder why.”
“That’s not what he means by ‘meanest.’ He means, like, not fancy, just your regular, bland, boring old flower. He doesn’t mean nasty or cruel.
“There are boring flowers?”“Try having a chat with Barry The Wild Ginger. He got nothin’. Anyway.”
They were walking down one of those trails where the dense canopy of leaves made it almost sunless.
“Did you ever meet William The Willow?” asked Rabbit. “He’s something.”
“Isn’t everything?”
“Isn’t everything what?”
“Isn’t everything something?”
“I mean something else.”
“Isn’t everything something else?”
It was only because they were best of friends and Rabbit understood that Elephant wouldn’t know sarcasm if it arrived in the form of a wolf that bowed deeply that he didn’t give him a bootless kick in the shin. (How fun is language!) “Never mind. My point is, William is a cool character. He’s a real poet.”
They soon arrived, because proximity in the magical forest is inevitable, unless a long, arduous journey is necessary for symbolic purposes.
William The Willow really was something else. His appearance alone was inspiring: he towered above the neighboring trees and lowered his rich green curtain almost to the ground. Close by, a stream and a grazing sheep. Tenniel.
“Rabbit! How wonderful to see you,” said the tree.
“William. It’s always an honor. This is Elephant.”
“I’ve heard a great deal about you, sir. It’s a pleasure to finally meet you.” William had a bit of a British accent, but how much to read into that is up to you, though there may be a story in there, somewhere, like “The Story of The Floating Willow-Tree Seed” or “The Stow-away Seed” or whatever.
“What are you working on?”
“I’m writing an ode.”
Elephant asked, “What’s that?”
William explained, “It’s a poem, a type of poem, that’s like the lyrics of a song. Like a sonnet or elegy. It usually praises something in a dignified way. And it is personal; not cold and distant, but genuine. I’m not terribly strict about form.”
Elephant had no idea what that meant, but he shook his head as if he did, which is dumb because you can’t fool a willow tree, for crying out loud. Rabbit asked if they could hear some.
William cleared his trunk and spoke:
Our shadows invite slumber,
Our lives play a gentle song,
Yet to some we are merely lumber,
To build yet another bench or
To fence-out a fawn.
We bear no malice, mankind:
We wish you the richest soil,
And rain to nurture your soul;
We wish you the gentlest winds,
So your leaves may dance and never toil.
“Does it have a title yet?” asked Elephant
“Well, it’s composed by a tree and its subject is trees, so I call it ‘The Bark Ode’.”
Rabbit grimaced. “That, sir, is literally the worst title for that poem that I can imagine.”
William smiled. “I know. But the look on your face is priceless. I’ll figure something out.”
Elephant couldn’t help but like William after this exchange; rabbit could be a real prima donna sometimes, so it was fun to see someone get his goat. Rabbit caught that. Who would even think it possible to get a rabbit’s goat?
While they were strolling back down the path, Elephant was full of questions: “What was so bad about the poem’s title? What’s a fence-out? Do humans have leaves?” Really good questions. After all of his questions were answered, which took a while, Elephant said, “So, a bar code is a fence. No, the other way: a fence is a bar code! Is that right? Doesn’t that mean that William wasn’t making a joke? That’s what the poem is really about!” Elephant was practically dancing at the cleverness of it all and that he had figure it out, himself.
Rabbit came to a stop. He was speechless. He couldn’t decide if Elephant was right or wrong. By golly, it did make sense, though he knew that it was supposed to be a pun.
Finally, Rabbit shrugged: “It makes sense. What you’re saying makes sense.”
Elephant did a spin with a ta-dah at the end. “Poems are awesome! I love poems! Why don’t we do this all the time?”
Rabbit had to make the inevitable concession: “Not everyone is built for poetry. You, my friend, are. I’ll be a son-of-a-duck, but you’re one of those who can get inside a poem. Well done.”
We can’t be sure, there was a lot going on in the magical forest at that moment – involving dragons, trolls, giants, serpents, lions, foxes, trees, fish, witches, leprechauns, lizards, birds, squirrels, monkeys, songs, spirits, giraffes, dogs, knights, magicians, wanderers, searchers and seekers, wolves, messengers, mountains, valleys, lakes and rivers and ponds and creeks and springs and brooks, tadpoles, and these are just the ones within hearing distance of our protagonists, and that’s a lot of distractions – but it seemed as if Elephant wiped away a tear with his trunk. It was a happiness tear, so when it fell to the ground, it embedded itself in that magic soil and one year or one hundred years later, the first Elephant Tree appeared. Need we say that what made it unique was its trunk?