There’s a tree which grows on the side of the road.
It stands not alone, nor hidden at the heart of an enchantied woodland.
Ordinary and unassuming, it meekly joins the scattered foliage dotting the local park.

Pass this plant on your trek to work, and notice how you don’t notice it at all.
Listen as it asks no attention of you. Feel the stagnant air as the modest tree
makes no attempt to draw you in. Its aura keeps to itself, taking only the space that its bark requires.

Pass the tree again, however, as you head back home to the warmth of blankets,
the delight and safety of lying down. Pass the tree when the night has fallen, when the sun itself has fallen too.

Catch the sky playing dress up in shades of blue that manage to glow in the darkest manner,
approaching black and yet saturated, colorful, moist, and vibrant.
You can almost hear the thickness of the color pulsing.

Opening its chest full of ancient robes, the sky descends from the attic wearing
shades that you hear of from hollywood nights, in storybook lines.

The sky will draw your attention with ease as the rest of the world is buried in black and grey.

It will only sustain it a moment, however, for now your eyes will lock with the tree,
and all of the power the scenery lacked to capture the eye of distracted man
will be held in the outstretched branches of humble tree.

Somehow despite the hour of the night and the starless absence of light, you’ll find
that the vibrant pulse, moist deep of the sky is matched and surpassed by these leaves alone.

Wondering where such a sight could stem from, your eyes trace down to the chocolate trunk.

As though you’ve forgotten your humanity, or perhaps as though you’ve remembered it,
your soul calls the tree trunk “home” and “friend”, before you’ve gotten a chance to recall

that you only compute the language you speak, that ants and owls abide in trees,
or that you’re a whopping six feet tall, too big to find yourself in a hole in a tree trunk.

You resist the urge to touch. You stare.
You wonder if all of the landscape’s colors migrated here to the tree tonight,
and you hear it ask you where you’re going. You feel the tree roots draw you out.