“No More,” I am finally saying. “No More!” The Earth opens at my feet. A dark chasm. Instinctively I back up, keeping my toes out of its maw. Chunks of black moist soil, grass, shrubs, benches succumb, sinking into bottomless, ever-expanding crevasses. A whole house disappears, dropping instantly. More follows, falling, falling, falling. The Earth is splitting open at the seams; eating itself, disappearing into itself.
I keep backing up to avoid going down. Till I back-step into a Tree. A Tree who lifts me up into Her branches. A Tree who embraces me. She holds me and the Earth opens below Her roots and we're falling like Alice down the rabbit-hole, like a planet down a black hole, like a child down a wishing well.
Only I am being held by the Tree. My Beloved Tree.
Remember Einstein, Dad always says. Remember Relativity. I am not falling – relative to the Tree. (like Dorothy tucked in her room as the tornado spins her home to another world)
The Tree is falling for me. Her upper branches flowing up behind Her, like hair blowing in a gust of wind, like a Weeping Willow unfurled.
Like the many-armed Goddess that She is, the Tree reaches round with one of Her branches and hands me a pen, with another She offers up a journal. “One should always have a pen as one travels ” She says. With other limbs She has made the seat that holds me, a set of twigs with blossoms caress my hair.
I write embraced by the Mother-Tree, Falling without falling into the black womb of the Earth. I write.
