Two Trees

My feet crashed through the dead leaves on a dry pine and oak hillside and the trail I had been following faded and was gone.  I made for a huge somber pine and sat under it and closed my eyes.  I saw myself through the branches of the trees, head bowed toward the ground, pack thrown next to me like a deflated life raft.  As I rose I saw the top of the tree, shaped like the billows of a cumulus cloud to the eye of a high wheeling hawk, and then I saw the other trees around and between them patches of brown earth where people had scratched at the dust for milenia.  I could no longer distinguish the big treetop but now I could see a tangle of roads twisting between cities, grey sprawling smears of concrete,  and to the north a huge mass of dust roiled up from the ground and from the south a bank of leaden clouds pushed forward and the two rushed at me and collided and I could see no more.


I open my eyes and pointed my feet upward, walking straight over the mountain until I came to a desolate plain that stretched to the foot of far away mountains and seemed not to have a single green leaf.  I passed a village and was scalded by suspicious eyes.  I spent the night in a cell of a room in a squalid town and the next day walked through dust and heat so thick that it stifled the songs of the birds and dust poofed out of the dogs' mouths as they tried to bark.


My road once again led me into highlands, a long range crossed by roads so rutted that the toughest trucks groaned and shuddered and gave up.  One of my feet began to throb.  In the silent heat of midday when all was around was brown and grey I came to a tree aflame with red blossoms, like a sudden shout of pain or joy, like a forgotten memory, a desert oracle.  I passed the tree, crested the ridge, and descended into Joyobaj.  My walk was over.