The Magnolia Tree

When I arrived, early March, the tree looked dead. Its thick grey trunk emerged from the brown earth with a certain stubborn starkness, as if to say, 'I stay; this is my place you know'. From this solid base, thinner branches and, even slighter twigs, swayed dangerously as the wind howled around, in and out, as if to say, 'I'm a force here too you know'.

 

Then, one day, a squirrel darted up the trunk and ran along a branch, before it hopped onto the roof. Then another squirrel, as if to say, 'There is life here you know'.

 

The wind still blew, the trunk remained solid, and on some days the weak sun reached into the corner of the brown garden with its grey tree trunk.

 

The birds were the next to arrive. They flew even faster than the squirrels darted. They did not run and leap. They flew, pecked and twittered, looking for seeds and berries, as if to say, 'We need food too you know'.

 

The birds were the first to find life in those dry, grey twigs, as they pecked away. What my eyes could not see, they found. How did they find these treasures? Did they see, or smell, or sense, the life energy that was flowing up from the hard brown earth, into that solid trunk, and out into those waving twigs?

 

They knew of course. Slowly my eye began to see those tiny mounds, the minute cracks, that heralded the arrival of buds. Oh, how slowly and silently the energy crept up from the cold earth, in search of the freedom to blossom. Will it ever happen? I wondered and waited, watching the squirrels and birds in their bustling search.

 

The first blossom was like a miracle of affirmation. The white, the red, the fulness, the joy, the beauty! One bloom became many; so many that twigs and branches bowed under their weight. Twig upon twig, branch upon branch, waving and rejoicing in the fulness of their freedom and beauty.

 

The soft wind became a howling gale. The blossoms began to drop their petals. In scarcely a day, their beauty showered down to the green grass below. Yes, the grass too had transformed from brown to brilliant green, beckoning the leaves emerging in the magnolia tree to join the cascading joy of spring.

 

Why, oh why, is such beauty, such freedom, such richness, spreading oh so slowly from the dried earth, and ripening in all its glory, such a brief encounter? Is it the nature of all creation, I wonder, to struggle, to emerge, and to take its place in the wondrous complexity and profusion of our life cycle?

Margaret Lawton