A new letter.
I 'm enjoying my little plot of land. There's a nice circle here, a walk I can make in a few minutes, centered around a tree. I've found it soothing.
But I've been disturbed from my walking lately, a small hole in the soil at the base of the tree keeps dragging my attention from my rounded pattern. It pulls at me like gravity, a tiny hole like some groundhog might make, but this is no rabbit hole. I've seen it growing, pulling the grass in, slowly but surely circling in to its center whatever is within its small radius.
I'm right now circling, turning myself. The cool weather has set in and so the trees hang lower with a red and yellow burden: drops come from the sky and peel away that outer skin so their color permeates the distance between us. I turn and turn, it must take me five minutes to round the tree and, and yet...
At the center is the tree and that damn hole. My rounds get shorter every time.
Four minutes now.
But there are other trees. Those trees, with their bright and brilliant leafs, once just green, like all the others. Now they become haloed in their own light, for such a short time, such a short time before they all just cast them off, everything brown. I can see some of them as I turn, just brown skeletons now. On one turn I think they are sad and downtrodden, the next turn I think they are dignified ahead of the others.
My tree is steadfast and solid, an old oak. It stays green as long as it can, I know because I've been turning here for some time now. Tall, much taller than I'll ever be. But its time with color is so short, and suddenly it is brown again. Right now it is showing the first tinge of red and I almost think it resents it. But it's a tree, right? What does it know?
I circle it because it is there. Should I circle another?
I've gotten down to three and a half minutes.