The old tree who leaned over the stream

Creative Strategy #7: Find the poetry in entropy.

The old old tree was tired.

For many many years he stood tall by the stream.

Casting its shade over the rippling water.

Dropping its leaves in the fall to watch them spin and gambol down the stream like new kids going back to school in the fall.

But one day the wind blew long and hard against the tree. He had never noticed it before. After some time he had the admit that the wind was stronger, so he bowed to the wind.

Later, the ground beneath began to soften in the spring rains. He had always counted on the ground to do the hard job of holding him steady

and for many years it had. But now he realized he would have to be responsible for his own standing no matter how soggy the ground.

And he discovered that if he leaned just a little bit the ground would let him.

It felt good to lean. After a lifetime of standing up straight, the advantages of posture were self-evident. Light. Rain. But he leaned into the lean and it felt good.

Then he fell asleep.

And when he woke he was lying across a tiny stream.

He became. a bridge between different sides.

He had never felt so useful before.

I may be a failure as a tree, he thought, but I am a truly wonderful bridge.

For years he happily provided a crossing for the many creatures in the wood.

He enjoyed their touches as they scrambled over his old bark.

And he got to watch himself in the river whenever he wanted.

This went on for years until men came and sawed him into pieces.

He sat in a pile of wood and had many chats with his brethren.

Eventually he was loaded in the back of a black pickup and driven down a dusty road to a white farmhouse surrounded by fields of corn ready to be harvested.

Sometime later he was split and put into a fireplace where he served as the first log of Christmas morning.

He burned happily all day and watched the children open their presents.

That night he became mostly cinders glowing yellow and orange.

His last memory was rising up in a hot draft of the chimney out into the cold winter night.

“I’m a spark,” he thought, rising to the stars.

Then the tree leaned all the way over.