Endurance

Driving home, under the first bright blue sky that I’ve seen in three days, I notice That Tree: the one that clings to the bare exposed north face of Mt. Davidson. It leans far, far forward off the rock shelf that it clings to. All of its skinny branches lean farther forward still. Seeing it, I think of a woman walking in a storm, with her back to the wind, hunched forward to keep warm, with her hair blowing straight ahead, clinging to her face and pointing the way. I’ve never seen a leaf on That Tree. And yet, it doesn’t seem to me that it’s dead. Only beleaguered.

Arriving home, I smell the earthy sharp sinus-clearing perfume that eucalyptus gives off. It comes from the skinned, decapitated tree trunk across the street, the tree that we all thought the incompetent tree trimmers had killed. They hadn’t.

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