Hope, Life and Wick

By: Cassandra Green

When I dig deep past the wild brush, I find myself in an unkept garden. Branches, vines, rocks, weeds and broken twigs cover dry, cracked soil. The trees from afar look buried in bushes and dead leaves. Their branches intertwine so that when you look up, you can’t even see the grey sky. It all blends. Nothing stands on its own, everything clings to the next dead thing. Dry, not even in search of water anymore. It all stands still, as if it wishes for time to slow down, or even break.

It feels like time may have stopped for a moment, but then… there in the distance, a brown bird bounces from branch to twig. It plucks off a piece of bark and then tilts its head as if to notice me. 

What do you say? He hops, tilts his head another way. 

What do you do? Stillness. 

Do you want my bark? And then flies away and up into the tall trees. 

It’s all so dry and seemingly dead and yet I feel something here. There is a story in this abandoning, a flicker of life, that once told, it could spark the entire garden into flame; an awakening fire. A dangerous, lethal story that could bring it all down to soot in place of dirt. Refining it all to black ash. I take a step and imagine it all up in flame. I walk into the smoke. 

A twig snaps beneath my foot. I take steps. Leaves crunch beneath my every movement. I brush against a bush and dry leaves fall onto my sleeve, then down to the ground. I brush the remains off and notice some hint of stone. Leaning down, sweeping away leaves I find a few stones in pattern to each other. Another brushing away to reveal a path beneath my feet. 

Standing up, I notice the brown bird has returned. Around the corner, I follow it to a tree where at the trunk there is some green. Pulling away fallen branches uncover green weeds and there… I kneel at the base of the tree amidst exposed roots and notice one… single… flower. It’s a dandelion, as yellow as the sun, nestled within the shaded covering.

I wander over to another tree and there too is a small group of green weeds and dandelions. 

I settle to it and walk further in. I explore, circling, studying, getting to know every dry corner only to find wick hidden in the midst of it all. There is life here still and a lot of work to be done, but wick and dandelion say it all. There is life remaining and I will tend to it.