Heavenly

Can I tell you about life in and under a cedar, two boys barefoot sprawled across branches that bend as if they were made of solid wind?

Can I describe the smell of damp earth beneath us, a picnic lunch scattered with school supplies (each child with his own first binder, pencils, and sharpeners), while University students walk by, not privvy to our hideout, not knowing that a bonafide Mother resides in that cedar twenty feet up, her children resting on branches below her?

"I think I will only talk about Our Tree quietly so that no one else hears," says Trinidad as we leave. "Otherwise, I'm afraid that what's natural and beautiful here will be spoiled by other people coming too much."

I see the sadness in his eyes. I'm guessing that he would also love to share this magical place, that he so wants others to honor the space in a way that is gentle to the tree and her community.

We hang long from branches so that our bellies stretch out thin and bare. We climb so that our hair is taken up in the wind. We laugh so that the sound of it echoes through the green as if from the tree herself, and perhaps it does. We drum, the tone shifting, as we gently rap the branches close to and away from her thick, furry trunk.

We are music here.