I have taken countless walks past a peculiar property where for several years I had been persistently distracted by the home’s ambiance of neglect and abandonment, augmented by the darkening shade of a mature pine tree, a loblolly, that casts a wide shadow which blankets both yard and home. This place creates a skin crawling feeling on the back of my neck.
And so my default state walking past this house is a fixation upon the ghastly shade and often this cursory glance is paired with a shudder and ejection of my eyeballs from the miserly estate, and as a result I never bothered to look up and view the tree itself with a steadier focus.
Today, however, I choose to examine the tree more carefully, setting aside the relative unease the property facilitates. It is a mature Pinus Taeda, with a thick plating of grayish bark with reddish tinge. Despite the diverse curvatures of the boughs which protrude from the trunk, there is a relative symmetry in the staggered ensemble as they progress upwards towards the sky. The tree, through its multi-decade maturity, has attained this upwards cohesion of its limbs: a rising crown. There is however one defector of a limb whose parabolic sweep travels eastward towards the street.
This is a somewhat rare window of time for observation as my internal state of being, my growing curiosity about this area’s flora, the rising crown of the maturing tree, courage to hold steady eyes on the damned property, and the golden hour of our orange dwarf star converge. The ample light of the descending sun is organized by the rising crown of the loblolly into many solar incarnations. After wiping beads of sweat from my face, I pause to absorb this distinct Kairos, taking the requisite time to exalt this splendid organism.
And in the greater area there are many groves of pine equally worthy of an elevated respect that I suspect eludes them. I have taken to memorizing their spatial placements more intimately during my walks. This particular loblolly however stands as the lonesome emperor of a grove extinct: a forgotten dynasty. Only myself and the spectra of despair which surrounds the trees vicinity seem to have acknowledged it.
And so in a place where desolation inhabits plastered walls, and where it seems a tormented history has worked its way into the mortar of brick, I reconcile the nested elegance of the Pinus Taeda during my ghost house transit.