The Wind In The World
He communed with the six hundred year old gum tree not knowing the time, only that it was dark, and it was late and the wind howled, sounding like an old woman grieving.
At the base he sat with his back against the bark, that shred itself off the trunk in weaving streams as they did in summer.
As all he could here was this wind and feel the tree, the strength of the tree, it was a singular thing, elemental, this is all there was.
If he concentrated and closed his eyes to the night, to the wind, the tree almost spoke to him in language never written or understood. Only in times when you opened your heart to the world.
He had lost his father and had gone looking for him down the bush track in this howling night.
Shouting out his name over and over until only the wind answered in it's baleful wail.
The feeling of no control eased within and nothing really mattered after all here, now, with the damn wind, and the dark, in this world, in this existence.
Below the sound of the wind screams filtered through the bush to him from the housing estate nearby, perhaps from others taken to the night in a final show of defiance.
Wild animals knew better than some that dwelled there, and it was better to listen to the wind, pretend there was no other sound at all.
No day, no town, no tomorrow. Night and tree, and this world.
He could have sat there for hours, and maybe did, until the cold got to him going past his flesh into his bones.
Get up he told himself, get up. So he did staggering slightly, and the moment had passed, with the tree, his old, old tree.
Turning he set off once again into that night into life, the moment lost, to be kept only inside, in the hidden places of the soul, out into the world.