Look, a tree in the forest, marked with your initial and mine. I wonder how long those letters have been here? I wonder if they’re really for us? Could be. Imagine: they’re enchanted. The writing would call us and we’d show up here, drawn to the spot.
At different times, though.
In different lives.
Of course.
Each time we’d feel deeply at home. And yet… there would be the pull of something more. Something that belonged here— like the boulders and the moss and the cool water and the roots holding up the ground— something that belonged here but was missing. Something just on the tips of our tongues. Something we could almost taste: electric and sweet. Maybe something we could feel.
Sometimes we’d be drawn here with lovers or children or friends in tow — whatever entanglements we carried in our cast nets. We’d be cruelly drawn from lives with no context for magic or the embrace of trees or the whisper of energy that can stir a person’s blood and steal their heart. So we wouldn’t be properly equipped. But we would take off our shoes and wade in the cool creek bed anyway, feeling the pull of some deeper current, collecting stones, polishing them between our fingers. Trying to catch hold of that thing we suddenly remembered we’d forgotten.
Other times, maybe, we’d just miss each other. We’d visit at different times on the same day. Each of us detoured by a thousand little choices. Or we’d visit at exactly the same time, but you’d be old and I’d be a child. Or I’d be blind and you’d be unable to speak. Maybe we’d bump into each other for real, once in a moon, but we wouldn’t know what to say and we’d stand awkwardly. These times we wouldn’t even wade in the creek— the past-present-future lives of the water would shame us, and we’d walk away, separately.
But what if— what if one time we actually did remember? What if we remembered that the blue of the sky and the warmth of the sun and the light in the clearing and the sighs of the pines and the sway of the bridge and the water between the rocks and the you between the me and the energy between our eyes— electric and sweet— were all part of the same music?
And, that time, what if we danced?
Words and photo © Jaime Greenberg, 2021
