THE DOOR IN THE TREE

I climbed through the gnarled orchard in a soft rain, searching for the shining medallions. They glinted and glowed all around; the wind wove and danced through the water, and pressed the leaves, which covered them and then revealed them in all directions, at all points.

I crept to one tower, a dark and looming one of twisted limbs; it was bottomlessly green and its savage thorns guarded a great load of the golden fruit. The life in the earth gathered around it, raging umber to ochre to verdure, roaring into spots of incandescence. I saw the light in the earth pouring out of the tree, the force in the soil.

I climbed through the rough substrate, the rain pelting down now, and grabbed and twisted the fruit with my long, leather hands. The tree fought and wounded me, but as I came around to complete the circle, it opened its door. I walked into the tree, the silent room, the living temple, the twisted spirit gut where I was born and will die.

The wind and rain were gone now, and the fruit hung calm and harmless around me.

Tell me of the Steely Oncorhynchus that swims through the veins of the earth. It struggles down from the towering places of its birth and spends a life in the vast ocean. Tell me of its return, its following a spirit thread back up into the mountains, back to the spot where its soul was woven.

I'll tell you of our birth in the forests and orchards, and our odyssey through the fire and blood of human life. I'll tell you of our return to the sylvan chambers, of their reflections in hospitals built from wooden skeletons, earth, and sand.