Maple Valentine

February 10, 2020

Greetings from a Maple Valentine,

They grew up together.  Neither knew the day they met; they just always were there.  They lived at the edge of a thick forest, close to where the river bent to explore a different way. 

He noticed her first, or it seemed that way.  It was autumn, and she wore colors he had never seen together, and it made something in him shiver.  He willed her to notice him, but it was impossible to know what impression he made.  He waited, and seasons passed, and his patience grew deeper, along with his feelings for her.

The grass grew around them, small shrubs appeared, wildflowers sprouted in small places out of the wind.  He watched her grow stronger, her limbs sinuous and supple, reaching out from her, caressing the air around her, reaching into the sky, holding it in place above them.

He sent her small gifts with the squirrels, who, while not known for their romantic side, were willing messengers, scurrying across the open space between them, bringing nuts, small branches, and little purple ditch flowers.  She seemed unmoved. 

Behind him the pine trees chuffed coniferously, and the ducks on the river laughed at his foolishness.  He shook off their teasing and settled deeper into the soil to wait and wonder.

In the spring he stretched his limbs and held out a robin’s nest.  A tiny construction of twigs and leaves and bits of string.  In the heart of it, three brilliant ovals, the color the sky would aspire to.  They were jewels, he knew, beautiful and fragile and perfect.  If she noticed them, he could not tell; there was not so much as a flutter of a leaf. He settled back to wait, and the seasons whirled.

Children came down the path near the river on their way to school, crossing an arched wooden bridge a few hundred yards from the bend.  They climbed the trees, shuffled through the leaves, marched on to wherever children go.  In the winter he saw a couple snowshoeing through the woods, laughing and calling to each other, their faces flush with the cold and something magic between them.  He was inspired by them and looked at her to see if she felt this, and saw the same thing he always saw.  She was beautiful, elegant and strong.  And silent.

The two of them grew, slowly, naturally, filling up the space in the woods. Each year he felt his limbs growing toward hers, and for one season they nearly touched.  But late every fall the men would come with ladders and bow saws and pruning tools, and gently, kindly, trimmed the air between them wider.

One winter evening, two people lifted a small birdhouse and hung it from his low branch.  He didn’t think anything of it in the moment.  But as years passed, as sparrows came and went, and wrens made a home and left for other places, he felt it as an extension of him.  And one day, on the edge of summer, he held it a little higher, so she would see it.  For the first time in their lives, she spoke to him.

“it’s beautiful.” she said.

He told her the first words he thought: “you are beautiful.”

The wind riffled her leaves and she swayed slightly, the green glinting in the sunlight.  She leaned toward him, and he felt the earth change.

He watched her on an August morning, dew on her leaves, the sky behind her pale blue, chalk dust clouds drifting over them.  He ached to tell her something more, to say whatever had first resonated in him.  He waited another year, and another, and one day he started to say and couldn’t.  She sensed him there and said: “i know.”

On a late summer afternoon, he saw the sky transform, and it brought rain, which wet her leaves in a soft staccato.  He watched the water sluice off her, each leaf shaking with the rain’s travel.  Her texture darkened as the water ran down her trunk and soaked the ground around her.  He felt the rain on him too, felt it join them, held them together in the downpour, connected by tiny droplets.

They lived together at the edge of the river, together, and always apart.  They talked quietly of the animals and insects, of the children who ran along the river.  They both wondered where the river was off to, always so intent on being elsewhere, while they were content to be only there. 

She would twist her twigs into small works of art, and he would draw his limbs against each other to create soft, moaning songs.  She would applaud in the wind until he blushed deep green. Once in a while a leaf of his would drift into her and she would capture it and hold it as if it were her own.

Winter came and they pulled a white blanket over them and waited, watching the river, the sun arcing over them relentlessly, knowing spring would be with them soon.  The children came one morning, all of them carrying red paper hearts, laughing like the water splashing on rocks, calling to each other as they ran across the frosted bridge.  They knew it was a special day.

The day brightened and he gathered a gift in his empty branches, filled every place until the boughs bent with the weight of each tiny bird.  Slowly he was transformed as each one landed, filled him.  He held the starlings, as if his own breath, and then exhaled and they lifted from his limbs into the air around him, a living cloud.  They whirled and danced and dove, and then as one living thing, descended into her, still chattering with the joy they were part of.  She laughed with them, and he felt her delight hum in him.

That night when they were alone, she put the full moon in her branches, a brilliant broach that bathed them in the same light, held them together in that ivory essence.  He was in awe of her.

“i love you.” she said, giving him the words he had waited to know and say to her. 

Beneath the moon painted snow, beneath the layer of leaves they had undressed, beneath the soil that held them, their roots wound through the earth, sought open places, and finally found one another.  He felt her, felt the life in her, and she wound each tiny tendril she had around him, and felt him become part of her.

The seasons danced and decorated and left and returned, and the two of them grew taller and stronger.  New children ran between them, new birds lighted in them, new leaves budded from their love and whirled into the world and all the while their roots embraced each to the other.  And each time he thought of it, no matter the season, he would lean toward her and say:

“i love you.” And she knew.

“i love you.” she would say.  And he knew.

Hope this finds you growing together,

David

Copyright © 2019 David Smith