Reincarnation

After my fatal accident, I realized I had come back as a Live Oak.

Ever the optimist, I thought: Great! I could live another hundred years!

I’ll never feel unmoored, not even when the wild summer storms make me sway like a hula skirt! Sure, I may lose a few branches—will it hurt when they snap off?—but probably my roots will hold.

I’ll never have to cook or wash dishes, all my meals delivered on rays of sunglow and from earthy, fermented molecules of goodness entering my body through the fine hairs on my long subterranean tendrils.

Ahh, to stand proudly day after day, shading the ambulatory beings in me and beneath me, all scrabbling for sustenance while I drink in the sun.

I wonder if I’ll get bored? Only time will tell. For now, I occupy myself with what goes on around me. With the sensations of bird fingers wrapping around my many arms, sometimes for only a moment, often overnight.

I listen to the squirrels packing twigs and leaves into a high crook, making a place to fornicate and raise babies. Then, thinking about my babies, I wonder how it will feel when my little acorns begin to grow.

A breeze tickles me from head to toe. I see the sun dip below the horizon. Night critters begin to sing. This is going to be my best life ever!