Lost Boys

It’s a real place. If you take the second star to the right and travel straight on till morning, you will arrive in the place called Neverland. There lives a boy called Peter Pan and a man called Captain Hook. There live the Indians and the mermaids and the fairies. There live the lost boys.

They roam with Peter Pan, following a life they think they love. They live in a land where children never grow up, but it’s an illusion. Children do grow up. Their childhoods are prolonged beyond what they are in the real world, but it's part of the curse. The curse of Neverland pays them in full for the time they spend there. As long as they stay forever, Neverland will grant them the youth the desire--for a time. But they all become pirates in the end. They all become evil when they grow.

The Beasts of Power and the Invisible Spec

There are beings, powerful beings, and they call themselves beasts. It is my lot to watch these beings, and although I have yet to be like my friend the Fir, I have learned their ways. I see them in the forest and hear them in the village. They wander the mountain alone or in groups, and often they carry weapons. What need have they of weapons? Nothing will hurt them. And if there were danger, their voices alone would be enough. Do they not know their power?

If Superheroes were Real

They say all legends have a grain of truth, and old myths are more fact than not, but most have forgotten the truth. We trees live long though, and some of us still remember the time superheroes ruled the earth. The sons of God had children with the daughters of men, and their deeds won renown throughout heaven and earth.

Not long ago, by the reckoning of trees, the superheroes came to an end. It was some 2,000 years ago in the spring, and while the three wise men, the astrologer, the alchemist, the herbalist, and the librarian still traveled from the east on their camels, the superheroes flocked to Bethlehem. Mary and Joseph stood guard beside the cradle. Both spent their lives training for this moment, though neither fully understood until now. They were armed to the teeth, but their robes hid their weapons and their hoods hid their eyes. With arms crossed, they stood between the dapple grey horse and the sheep to protect their God. He came in the night and the star burst over the stable, sending messages across the world, to Batman and Black Panther and Red Tornado and Wonder Woman. The time had come. The Hero had arrived. 

The White Stag

He walks among the leaves, intentionally dragging his hooves to hear the gold swish around his legs. He’s looking for something, but then again, don't they all? They look for food in the fall, searching as if it’s already winter. They wonder if they can store it up as the squirrels and chipmunks do, but it’s impossible. With their antlers they can’t cut the grass, and if they could, how would they carry it to the store house?

Orange

“When did your leaves turn orange?” I ask my neighbor.

I've turned my face so long to the sky, I haven’t noticed the forest. I know the stars. I know the moon. I know the way the sun shines down all summer through the heat and the cool. 

But I didn't notice my brother.

When it Rains

It rained on me all night. The water poured down around me, running off the leaves, down the trunks. It made rivers among the sprouting grass and ran around my body. It flowed in where my body left an indent in the soil as if I were a black hole drawing all toward me in the midst of space. The water ran and covered me. It seeped into my veins and though my bark. It pulled the salt from my veins until they were clean, and washed it away to the sea.

A Fallen Branch

I love my branches. I love them like I love the moon. I’ve shared my sap with them and grown them from nothing. At one time, there was nothing on my trunk. Now branches reach to the moon and lift her my songs.

But sometimes my branches fall. Wind tears them off, men cut them down, or disease infests them.

I awake in the night to the pain. It’s the pain of memory and the pain of emptiness. Where there once was a branch, there is a ragged hole. It reaches almost to my core and I feel the pain through every ring. My bark bleeds, my insides are out and the wind seeps into places it should never enter. Sap runs down my bark. Tomorrow there will be a stain, and the next day. My paper white bark will be stained from the pain and I will always be stained from the memory. My branch is gone.