It creeps softly across the window panes. A grayish brown branch resembling a grandmother’s beautiful, aged hand bends inward with Time’s lean. Each granite colored digit lifts awkwardly from brown, knotted, swollen joints. As months tumble into each other, the days shorten, then lengthen again, their changing seasons measured by this silent, waving arm.
Outside the window, fall brings flames of color that extend a foliage sunset from hours to weeks. It starts with a rich kimono red, gradually brightening to jack-o-lantern orange and then dulling to a sweet cinnamon. Then, leaves hang limply on the branch ready to drop. Back lit by the sun, they look like ancient parchment maps, veins leading off toward new territories. Eventually, they fall, joining mountainous drifts of wet leaves lining the street. You inhale the sweet, moist, earthy perfume of decaying leaves and hear the musical crunch of curling dried leaves under a pedestrian’s feet. Like little winged packages, the leaves leap into the wind, each with a mission to sink into fertile soil (B27, B28).
Winter comes, bringing Morse code messages tapped by bark fingers on the pane. Now, the gentle creak of stiff limbs moving in the wind edges nearer. Snow coats the branch with a fluffy white collar. Finally, tiny red bumps coat the smooth, gray bark. They are buds, ready to burst at the first sign of warmth.
Spring brings silhouettes of cool, steamy rain against the window. Creatures pass, busily making their way along the tree’s branched highways. Little white spring flowers in discreet lines look like ladies’ underpants dangling on a clothesline. Crinkley new leaves unfurl, shaped like fat green hands with triangles for fingers. So new and bright, they appear neon. Electric storms leave long, fuzzy, green filaments stuck to the screen.
In summer the tree’s foliage creates a moving green dome above, and skies seem dotted with green clouds. As you step to the window, the shaded outline of leaves patterns your skin, cooling your face and arms Breezes, caught by leaf surfaces, are shuffled in; the curtains billow. No day is ever the same, even in a world as small as eight panes. This glass-framed limb reminds us that transformations occur constantly and consistently everywhere we turn.
