Tag: tree

So the magpie swept up to his high branch, wings buffeted by the warm summer gusts. His tree grew old and tall at the top of the cutting, at its very edge, where the little cliff of scraggly bushes dropped suddenly down to the four sets of tracks and the log yard. It was a pale, silvery gum, straight-trunked with few branches, each one sturdy and clustered with large, long, thin leaves that shifted in colour from apple green in youth to faded bottle in middle-age and to a palette of spotted purples and greys as they grew ready to fall. Along with its dry leaves, it dropped unusually large gumnuts that, falling from a great height, cracked and spilled seeds that went scuttling over the pavement. The magpie had seen many trains pass on the tracks below him, but the gumtree in its long lifetime had seen many more. The tree had heard many voices, and wondered many things. Chief among its thoughts at that moment was an attempt to comfortably explain the growing nagging sensation it felt of some mounting, rumbling energy in the air. Had the world become faster, these trains more frequent, or was it the tree that had slowed?