Fallen Cypress

            It started as nothing… an atom that rolled like an avalanche into a seed that buried itself. Wrapped in earth, protected from light and sound and danger. Planted near the water’s edge, nourished by the ebb and flow of the silk beside the land. Months passed and the moment arrived when it stretched and broke the ground and drank the sun.

            Dizzy with the spinning of the seasons, it continued to grow; days into weeks into months. Years passed. The diameter of its foundation spanned in great length. Its branches grazed the sky, it seemed. The silk rose and fell, bathing its roots, quenching its thirst. All the while, the world evolved around it. People came, small one year and larger the next. Then those people brought people. They smiled and laughed and danced beneath the canopy of the Cypress. They frolicked and splashed in the smooth substance beside the land. Birds sang. Squirrels chattered. The wind whispered through the tops of the trees. All around it, over all this time, there were memories.

            The Cypress kept watch as the years mirrored themselves. People were new. Activities remained traditional. It was born each spring and it died each winter, and each summer it reached to embrace the people that gathered around it. It stood tall and silent while the woman took space beneath it… painting its surrounding in oil on an easel of white. It swayed with the breeze to fan the beaded foreheads of children who chased one another in a game of friendly “Tag.” It shivered in the storms… it shone in the sunlight. It was tall and proud for the people who came to draw on memories they’d made with it. It was a pillar…. A monument. A landmark.

            Then the time came when it wouldn’t see spring again and it wouldn’t die with the winter. The silk beside the land was frayed and torn and it swelled and beat against the trunk until the earth gave way and the roots were exposed. The rising rage wrapped itself around the Cypress and tore at its branches and pushed against it until the weight was more than it could withstand. Exhausted, it leaned. The forces of nature carried it to the ground and left it there to slumber for eternity… erasing memories, and changing the predictable flow of evolution that had taken place in this spot for so long.

            The new people… the old people… the older people… the oldest people… They heard of the fallen Cypress and they mourned. The capable, inspired by obligation, gathered together and lay their memories to rest. They collected the items, thrown about by the raging, frayed silk and discarded that which could not be refurbished. Most importantly… in the face of defeat… in the moment of silence when the oldest people grew weary and hope was suffocating… in the shallow fringe of new silk… another was beginning to stretch. The ground was breaking…. And it was drinking the sun.