The Lifeblood

Pine needles, sharp when touched, do not cut. They move and sway with the high-pitched “whoosh” of speaking wind. Steeples of eternal winter, evergreens, in towering knowledge, never rest. Branches of rough bark, giving homes to soft-furred mammals, hold steady the memories of generations. Within that bark, lives tales of decades, even centuries, recorded and transmitted. When they bleed, the scent is heavy, and a keen eye would know that they had committed a great crime upon their blade. Perhaps simpler folk need the blood, to consume, for a glimpse of the world beyond. Evergreen, the elder and teacher; the record and damnation; the life blood brutally assaulted for momentary pleasure in a world that the others could share, but often enslave. It waits, without judgment, with kin, for the end of this viral threat, accepting cessation as a planned certainty. Knowledge, broadcast and shared, with weeping certainty, warns that many will meet their end. That is the warning of the raging, hot wind, and the insight of the needles’ edge.