After the Storm
After the storm the grove is becoming still,
its almost-silence, like a faint bass clef accompaniment
that, with the wind, has stirred the gnarled tree at its core.
The roots plunge into streams beyond sight,
its branches—scoured by a storm’s fierce hand—
reach upward,
as if called by a light past the fractured sky.
She stands there,
a bundle of threads in her palm—
small strips of a blanket,
never wrapped around its intended warmth,
now frayed by time’s ungentle touch.
Near the tree, a seed rests in the cleft earth,
small and bright,
as if set by a purpose
the storm couldn’t undo.
She kneels,
pressing the seed into the soil
where the roots weave like strands of an ancient counterpoint.
The ground is cool,
yet it parts at her insistence,
a quiet yielding to her hands.
The threads stay close,
their tattered edges brushing her fingers
like a dream left unswaddled.
She doesn’t lay them down—
not yet.
Rising, she gazes at the tree,
its form a testament to both ruin
and an unexplained resilience.
It stirs a longing,
but leaves it unnamed.
The wind rises, grazing her skin,
surprising her with a note of joy laced with ache,
as if it bore echoes
from a place beyond the grove’s borders.
She wonders
how large the grove would have to be
if it held the true size of her loss.
She turns to leave,
but something—
a nudge,
a grace—
makes her glance back.
A few threads, hardly a cloth,
that had slipped from her grasp,
are caught by the wind.
They are lifted,
spiraling upward
to somewhere beyond the grove,
flying away home.
She lingers,
watching the small fragile threads
until her eyes only see the memory of them.
She feels the presence of the tree
and realizes it, all along,
was waiting and watching with her,
as a witness to the threads’ resurrection.
She knows the roots of the tree
are curled beneath the seed,
alive with a vow
that outran the storm’s reach.
At last, she steps into the dusk,
the remaining threads still clasped,
though she scarcely notices
she holds them now.
The grove softens behind her into light.
The tree remains,
its branches tracing a sign against the waning sky—
marking what she has sown,
what has flown away,
and what may yet bloom.