I Kissed a Tree Under the Moon in Gemini

Earlier this week, I kissed a tree. This was not part of a tree hugging moment although I've proudly had many of those. I kissed the stump of a fallen tree, a jagged stump about head high, that many would call ugly. I call beauty.

With stars as streetlights, it's home to life. Insects and lichen live in reciprocity. It's fallen body is now a tunnel, the perfect cocoon for rabbits, fox or squirrels.

This tree or very tall stump, as it would be more accurately called, and I have had a revealing relationship. I've known of its presence for over a year and a half, seen it from my window many days. It appears to have been struck by lightning long before my arrival to its yard. It's top half stretches out in the garden while its lower half remains standing, sturdily rooted in Earth.


Ever since I first made its acquaintance, I've thought the hollow, curved stump was the perfect place in which to sit and hide.

This past winter, I realized the stump was vanishing, returning home as trees do. I was devastated, shocked and dismayed. How had I forgotten even the stump is here temporarily just like me? Maybe that's how I forgot. My temporariness is something I unconsciously avoid. Likewise I stopped noticing the tree.

Until one evening this week....

A year and a half after first having made its acquaintance, a year and a half after I told myself it would make a good listening place, I sat cupped inside, held by the arms of the tree stump.

Tears came for all the opportunities missed. Smiles came as I reminisced. I recalled the magnolia, mimosa and silver maple, climbed in one grandmother's yard and the woods in which I played at anothers. Then there were the trees atop the dirt bank behind my childhood home. Three in particular grew together in such a way that their long trunks, a holy trinity of sorts, made a house in which I played.

Somewhere between fifteen and going on fifty, I forgot trees. I've not forgotten them entirely. Photos in which I've captured their form attest to this. Yet I've not listened, listened deeply to trees.

This night encircled in old arms, tucked away, I hear:

"I have watched you too. You are right. We are not the same from years or months prior. Yet we are exactly where we are suppose to be in this moment, right now, me and you, under Gemini with the crossing moon."

I had forgotten this but I looked up to see the half-moon traveling across Gemini, the twins in the sky, my zodiac sign.

The tree continued: "I came here thanks to fire in the soil, fire breaking open a seed. Fire from above split me open, so I now hold insects and you. I hold love.

Both fires are required from above and below to hold the light that is needed for mankind to grow.

Let your roots run deep in heaven and earth. They are primed for these times, times of Great Birth.

And last but not least, when in life you need rest, lie on the earth, lean on a tree."

Held in the arms of the stump, I reach. I stretch my arm and place my hand at the highest point of what's left standing. Hand in hand, the tree and I dance. I hear myself sing, "I could have danced all night." It is not too late.

With the stars as streetlights, I kissed a tree.
With stars as streetlights, I'm discovering a long, lost love. It is the tree. It is me.

With Gemini above and the moon crossing too, I am shown the gem-in-I.
It's not just in me. It's in you.

-The Stump and Dawn! The Good News Muse 3/23/10