This oak

Wordsworth writes in a way that converges past memories and present circumstance to inspire the formation of something new. Memories are tricky in that they poke their head out when you least expect and at times can be quite baffling. I am revisited by a certain smell, a flash of a woman's face, a broken starfish in my childhood hand. The memories themselves don't always mean anything to me until I connect them, as Wordsworth does, to a current situation. Strolling through Audubon Park my eyes are immediately seduced by oaks. Powerful, peaceful, begging for our limbs to be intertwined as I map out which route I would take to climb her. I always examine the best way to climb a tree upon first meeting. Sit. Lay. Close your eyes. This tree becomes every tree I have ascended before, becomes the cuts and bruises of my youth and the hiding places of my adolescence. I am transported back in time, and I can smell the pages of a new book I just purchased and devoured under an oak in City Park so many years ago. I trace the course bark with delicate fingertips, feel the folds of age upon this tree. This is my tree. Right now this tree exists for me and no one else. I image my hair is Spanish moss, my skin dark and brittle, legs extending below the ground. How sturdy, how certain. I think of those who were here before me, sitting under their tree, reclining to their memories. I am reminded that I am human when a sneeze explodes from my lips. I feel my lips, my face, my skin as I have just done to the oak tree. Lying here, outside my body, I am free to lose myself in a sea of daydreams under the constant shade of this live oak.