Small Men in Trees

[Note: I welcome comments and opinions and all forms of response. Please note that I will be only erratically within access of internet in the next month. I will post stories as I can for that period.] 








Small Men in Trees

       By Trevor Reimer, MA. Sc.

A sycamore tree invites weebles, and these within a few years generate the primacticillia that make homes possible for the desert owl whose main source of food thrives only near a site of primacticillic protein. One such tree of remarkable height and girth grew near the city of Bethlehem. The radius of its lower branches equaled, I would say, sixty feet, a giant among that species. Kids played in it, let me say for the sake of momentary diversion. And, if you will bear with me, as a break from the routines of botanical science, I will describe some of the activities I noticed around this particular tree on a day spent in its kindly shade one holiday oh so many years ago when Maggie and I first met. We went there to Bethlehem on a whim, the first idea for a destination that hit both of us as funny and crazy.

       So, our honeymoon was spent under its care. I say “care” because we took our pleasures under its canopy day and night for five weeks. Something in the air, some feature of its being, whether a magnificence or simply a plentiful supply of oxygen, or possibly even its oddity as a place of human concourse I cannot say. We did not think about the reasons then but simply lived joyfully for thirteen days, as long as the sycamore rained love down and accepted our adorations. We did not adore the tree openly; never mistake us for idiots. That spirituality is a product of my more recent meditation on those loving days. We adored by living piquantly within its circumference. We actually, can you believe it, set up a tent. We had intended to stay in a hotel for the duration. The first few nights we did just that but with the madness of Arab speech of which we understood not a word and the bustle of the bazaar in the square a hundred yards down the hill from us as well as the incessant knockings on our door by the hotel keeper (who I think was simply trying to catch us off guard naked and in the act, you know) we bought a length of canvas from a seller and fashioned our own tent.

       We laughed and you, too, would have laughed to see cloth billowing about us in the wind. And then, tangled up in yards of white we lay there out of breath and happy. Now, we ate and played cards during the day. Because Maggie is a damned fine guitarist we sang such songs as our own “Frera Jaqua” and “The Canadian Railroad Trilogy.” Even kids’ songs like “I Know an Old Woman” and “The Song My Paddle Sings.” But Bethlehem wine is awful so we paid some merchants to go down to Zanizibart for a case of Karemzailzak Rouge and when it arrived we had feasts, I tell you.

       Long before the arrival of the wine we already spent our nights in moonlight frolic. We stayed put. Where we were. No need to do anything anywhere but under old Syc. When she stood there naked after everyone else had gone for the night, of course, white as light in a white room or snow-shine at night and the hot wind blew her hair about her face so for a second she couldn’t see me, then I loved her as the primrose loves the bee. As apple petals love the dark wet branches that bear them up. All those nights. All those days, too, looking forward to the wine, the night wind, and the freedom of protean clothelessness.

       And then my Maggie sickened and died and we were left separate. We had been married long enough to love each other, not just to have fallen in love. She died, it is likely, from a virus carried by birds. She was thirty-nine then. Our parakeets and canaries are most likely to have been the source. Birds incubate a set of viruses deadly to humans in the presence of particular proteins. I wish I had my Maggie back with me. Maybe she will come again if she sees fit. I will first have to convince her though that I can choose a better site for a honeymoon, I think.

       As I was saying, to get back to business, the Corbet Owl lives in a tree that has, over decades, established for it a particular benevolent culture.