This image is from twelve years ago.

The wind is blowing.

From the west?

Will I ever experience gentle west winds again or will they fill me with fear and remembrance from here on out.

Trauma creates deep wounds that never quite heal despite all the scar tissue.  Ready to open up and bleed at the slightest provocation.

The windchimes, the ones of wood and copper handmade and tuned to a melodious phrase (I forget which key) by a company named Woodstock may be gone.  Or perhaps they’re in the debris left behind.

I used to love listening to them when the wind rustled on a summer evening.  The setting sun glinting on the copper.  They sounded like my heartstrings thrumming in contentment. During storms, they played a symphony of strong emotions.  I wonder what they sounded like when the tree sheared off. 

Did the tree scream?

Research now tells us that trees communicate with one another, have friends, and have a mechanism to help a struggling friend who is sick or malnourished or dying of thirst.  Is my forest in mourning?  Are they pumping nutrients to the stump? Are they singing a dirge when the west wind blows?

Much of the trunk of the tree still lays in my yard.  I need someone to cut two four-inch or so slabs.  I want a remembrance of that tree for me.  One for my son.  Charcuterie boards?  Maybe.  Something.  I have a friend who is a serious woodworker.  Perhaps she will have an idea. 

But I want that wood sheltered in my home.  The one miraculously still standing.  My heart home.

I’m in shock still, but able to recognize my good fortune.  My house should be collapsed.  It wasn’t built to sustain such a hit.  The tree was old.  I’m guessing the diameter was 36 inches or more. I hugged it a time or two.

Years ago, now, perhaps 15 or more, I planted a variety of climbing hydrangea.  It grows wild in the forests of Japan.  It needs shade and the north side of an oak tree to thrive.  It had both.  Slow growing, it had just started to take off – flowering its tiny white flowers in June.  I hope I can salvage it – move it to another oak tree.

My garden looks like a war zone.  The same wind that sheared my tree threw my lawn furniture, fountain, and garden tools around.  I’ve no doubt lost a lot of work.

But my house still stands.

Hallelujah.

Yes, Hallelujah in the vein of Leonard Cohen.  Perhaps I’ll write my own verse to that masterpiece. 

I offer up my own very broken hallelujah.  Grateful.  So grateful.