Mason Beckett ’27
A Grandfather Tree stood alone in a naked field covered with blankets of white snow. Old tree stumps lay buried in the ground like rotting brown teeth. Icicles clasped onto sagging arms of the wrinkled Tree whose beautiful leaves had fallen long ago. A frozen wind danced obliviously around the Tree, rattling the icicles and the Tree’s memories. It remembered how the forest used to sway slowly with the gently falling snowflakes and dance wildly with the winds of the night. That time was gone, a single moment captured in a snow globe and stored on the Tree’s decaying memory shelf. On the edge of the field stood a desolate, freezing cabin. Logs lay atop each other like wooden coffins. Its cold river stone chimney sat smokeless and had the untamed growth of a hermit’s white beard from the piling snow. The Tree saw a man trudging his way through the heaviness of the field, carrying a blade of rusty teeth who had been starved for ages. The Tree let out a deep creaking sigh as the man’s steamy breath gradually grew nearer and nearer. They were the same. Alone, aging in the winter snow. Both waiting. Waiting for life to melt away.