Like winter sentinels, the aspens stand spare and silver in the thin and icy light. Two stories tall and more, bodies slender and posture straight, they encircle us like towering gray guards, watchful, protective of those whose lives are lived among and beneath their sheltering serpentine limbs.
Viewed at even the shortest distance, it is their deportment that dominates: solemn, graceful, skeletal branches like silken bone.
From beneath those branches, the view is wholly different.
More than merely vigilant, they seem almost parental, branches spreading out in all directions to embrace the life below, reaching skyward to touch the spirits’ house, the very azure itself, hoping to grasp a blessing to bestow upon the many children at their feet.
At dawn, arms and hands and slender fingers made of pewter stretch and pierce the vault above, parting sheer clouds amidst their morning dance. The sky wears a blanket the color of the cornflower dusted with snow, cool and calm before the sun lends its intensity to the day at hand.
By midday, air and heavens alike have warmed.
The guardians’ limbs now gleam, shining silver, yet touched with gold in the warmth of the noonday sun. The branches gain a new vitality, strong and solid and muscular. Fingers twist and turn, seeking to hook the light’s edge and draw it down to those below who would otherwise breathe in cold and shadow.
The heavens themselves have exchanged their cool robe of light blue dawn for dress of deepest indigo, the perfect backdrop to the smooth metallic lustre of aspen arms reaching skyward.
And so the day passes, as Father Sun makes his journey across the sky, the trees standing vigil along the lower reaches of his path as they mediate between his fiery touch and the tender faces of his many children below.
And then, still early, the sun’s journey heads down the celestial hill, as winter’s cold sends his lunar counterpart ascendant. As he descends to his evening’s rest, he blesses the world anew in the day’s final moments, sending slanting rays of light to illuminate the world one last time before the dark.
The sentinels remain in their positions, immovable, eternal, yet changed once more: The setting sun bleaches their bodies the color of smooth white bone, their limbs spreading like spare antlers held proudly, defiantly against a turquoise sky as impending night encroaches at the corners of sight.
Still, arms and hands raised in supplication, they yet seem to plead for sun and moon alike to limn the fast-dimming path of those they shelter. The aspens touch the blue in all its hues, transmuting it into light and breath and life for the children of Father Sun, we who they hold daily in an embrace as old and wise as time.
~ Aji
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