Reflections On a Night Well Spent

Tonight I sizzle into a room, oblivious to the floor melting below me like boiling drops of maple syrup hot from the cast-iron skillet and cast a smoldering glance at what was a magnificent tree, now haphazardly whittled down to a dwarf chair, small enough to weep for what it once was, when it first sprang from the ground thin, like a tentacle wrapping around the air and the earth, and then when it shot up over night, in the glow of the harvest moon (just in from watching Chinese children play chess outside on kites), and then when it groaned into its manhood, shooting off shoots right and left-- shoot, shoot, shooo birds, it thought. Shhhhoooo, with your claws digging into me, painting me with your malignant defecation. Whisperssss shoo. Shoot. Shoot. The fatness of a tree trunk. The width of the world. The wonderful circles for every year. All's a circle. All is round. All is rhythm. All is love. All is one. Tree is chair. Sober is drunk. Happy is devestated and it all matters and it all does not matter at all, for after all everything's gonna be okay and all is decaying anyway. So the rush--why for? Soon though, the tree stout and tall and gracious welcomed birds like the street welcomes us at night after our parties. Remember darling your wild baboon dances that you decorated Wofford with. What a charmed street. Soon the birds were beloved by our tree and it hosted many a fantastic bird orgy in its maturing limbs. Limbs, not branches. Limbs, strong and passionately reaching up at the moon. Grabbing at it, clawing up toward it. Most think it is the sun that the tree arches upward toward. Lies, I tell you, and believe me. The sun might be his creator and lover, but the moon matters more. Moon, my man, it moaned, why have you forsaken me and look down with disappointment. Yes, old cat, I live older now, with black knots and way two many lovers' initials scratched into my body, but what say you? You hate me moon and you say I have lost my childlike purity. I have not! I have not!

Tree bellowed! The moon barely grimaced, too old to show its apathy at the whining of the tree. Trees always whine, too passionate not to.