Quercus coccinea

The scarlet oak casting its spindle shadow along the south side of my house has not even bothered to start on its buds yet. This one lives at the northern most reaches of its habitat - for now. For now, it is more prevalent in the Ohio River Valley and in the Appalachian middle states. But this one - no doubt brought here and planted by someone - survives quite well despite the many New England seasons. It survives by taking its time in spring. In contrast, the silver maples (Acer saccharinum) are anxious already, building maroon colored teardrop flowers and poking them out into the warming air, breeding before building new leaves. But the scarlet oak waits. The equinox has only just passed and now, with longer days than nights, it will begin to remember. Now the sap will begin to flow. It is the tallest living thing along this stretch of wild adjoining the right-of-way and second only to a large leaning Ash (Fraxinus americana) further down Front Street. The scarlet oak can afford to wait, and it does a service to the younger trees on the floor of this wild, allowing them a head-start. Is this accidental synergy, a strange coincidence? There is a wise seer in Concord whose art and mind and very life have evolved into an allegory in which accidents have stopped occuring and the major currents of life bring a lifting presence. She helped me to see these patterns outside my door. To read place as place remains to be read. The lillies stick their green tongues out of the earth this week. Renewal.

And it is refreshing against the memories I still cannot expel completely. H.E., for example, innoccuous enough, or so you would think. First a smokescreen: Standing in the doorway to my room, telling about things removed from his real work, such as it was. "I do not know who is writing such bad things about good people," he said, "but I think they think it is me." I knew nothing of the things he told me, and wondered why he protested so much. Then later he stood in my doorway and told me he had lied about the first thing. As if I had brought it up. As if I some how deserved to be implicated in his whole kindergarten scheme. You see, it was not that he had written bad things about good people. Who cares, right? It was the intentional charade he drew me into to make it seem like it was something else well before the proverbial what not hit the proverbial thingy. As if I were there to be manipulated in his bad manners. With the exposure of the lie, the whole house of cards tumbled down. This was not some one who valued other people's minds or work or concerns. This was not someone who took the real stuff of life very seriously. There were no principles in this person's motives, no desire to engage the world and leave it better than they had found it. No. There was just malice and jealousy and manipulation. And you may be saying to yourself, well, so what? Lots of people are like that. And they are.

"Our age is retrospective," Emerson wrote. The Scarlet Oak remembers.