Glass Trees

There’s a land across the sea where the tress are glass. 

This earth is too warm for the glass trees to live, but they grow anyway. They grow in the dark, but look up to the home they came from. They came from the moon. Seeds came in the night as beads of dew. They came and planted themselves. Here in the soil, they put down their heads, and when they raised them again it was through a haze of dirt and sticks and leaves. They pushed every hindrance aside and sliced leaves in half in their effort to reach the moon. They fought. They struggled. They remained. Here they remain, but not eternal.

I look out across my imagination and see them there, growing invisible across the land. They stand like shadows in the night. They stand in the rain and snow, sleet pouring down their sides. It pools in their leaves and pours out on the rabbits and moles and foxes poking their heads out to see if the rain has stopped. It has not.

The trees guard the forest they live in, though they will not be there long. They came from the moon, and will return, but while they are here, they thrive. Deer wander among them. Foxes hide in their roots. Silver leaves fall in autumn, and the snow keeps them cool in winter. 

There are veins in the trees, but you cannot see them. They are there, glass among glass, bringing life. They reach down through the soil. They reach into the deep dark and draw up life. They join the veins from the mountain and bring life from afar. They bring life, and grow. They grow up to the moon until they fall and return there forever. 

Grass and bushes and flowers grow among the glass trees in the summer, but now is winter. Winter shows them white and cold, and if you put your hand to the trunk, you will feel the secrets. Secrets come through the cold, chilling your hand and speaking to your bones. They speak to you, but you cannot hear them. They speak to Ida B, and she hears. She understands and brings messages to her village, the message from the shadow trees.