Black Alder in Fiction

The locust trees rose up from the earth like unforgiveness. Their dark looming lengths rising up to the heavens, blocking out the stars like a liar staves off the truth. Below he carried himself in that old rhythm as careful steps avoided every knurled exposed root, rock and shamble of rambling pricker bush. The terrain sloped down to the water's edge where a sunken tree bough spoke of a time when the pond was perhaps a simple creek. That was many feet and years beyond where his feet held firmly. Silently he stood there as the wind rippled and eddied in odd cadence. The wind's volume flooded the terrain like a shout only to dwindle to a near whisper, this went on for sometime without much rhythm or semblance of pattern. He could close his eyes and she was still there, laughing and smiling in that way which pierced him.

She was the only one that could and the only one he would submit to.

Twenty five years gone and still he could not shake the weight of her voice from his heart.

With the locust looming behind him their cast shadows painted him with prison bars as wind tumbled in drunken spasms through bough, brush and upcroppings of stone. He rested sometime there by that submerged bough, eyes alit with the memory of words and warm hands that would make this world not so cold. Nestled in a crouch he could see the small tract of earth that jutted from the pond's murky green plane, it was large enough for a lone black alder tree to grow. The thought made him laugh inside.

"Dangerous waters indeed" He said in a whisper, not that a living soul was in earshot.

He articulated the path along the water's edge only to stop as the path was crossed by a large scrub pine that had been felled some time ago. Beyond it was a fiberglass boat set face down upon a burm of moss capped earth. The moss had grown around the boat it had been there so long but it took little to pry it free and soon he was gliding across the water.

Reaching the small island he locked eyes with a cluster of hyacinths that grew amidst fallen leaves and high grass. Carefully he walked to one side of the tree crouching down, his fingers pressing into the earth. It's rich red loam pressing into pores, he drew a pinch of it up, smouldering it like a hot coal only to draw in it's scent.

He held her there beneath the black alder tree, starlight piercing the rolling stygia above. Eyes blue and brown skyward framed their blanket of stars and beneath it they would toil in the won rights of their love. Their bodies moved in fierce passion, so deep and honest it left flesh sore and their souls aching. It was enough for that moment, but the long road ahead proved too strong and before the blink of an eye, warnings cast in wrinkles their gas tank had gone dry.

He loved her in that stone cold embrace, her pale flesh and slender arms draped over his rugged frame as they danced in slow rhythm.

“Baby, I'm gonna love you forever Here, heart deep under the black alder tree Time will wrinkle But darlin' it's steadfast just you and me

Darlin' this time I hold forever Your lips stamping me like a letter I can never send Hold me now with your cold honesty Because the sun's creeping the ridge in an hour

Sixty minutes more, under this black alder you're all mine."

"You can never let go” she whispered to him as the black alder's boughs cast twisted shadows across them.

They stood eye to eye, statue still atop that tract of earth jutting from the still pond. Little time left as the earth was tinged in streaks of copper. He drew in her scent as if it was the last time but he would return and they would stop time again. This place was their own but the world beyond the ridge was calling him. It always drew him away from her.

The fiberglass boat uttered a soft clunk as the hull bumped against a rounded submerged stone at the small island's shore. He sighed and drew his face down, ashamed that in returning to one obligation he was abandoning another.

He backed from her and framed her porcelain beauty, the darkness around them seemed to grow deeper, denser as she stared back, motionless in her stance before every detail of her became the whole of blackness. There was nothing left but a muted oblivion that carried him with the delicacy of a mother.

His eyes drew open to the sight of the sun as it rolled in it's vainglorious majesty across the landscape. The island's meekness became ever so much clear as he rose from the ground, a cluster of hyacinth where she stood and in his mind, where she still stood.

Turning he began his return, the rest of his life was waiting, just as she has all these years. There is no consciousness as the man-once-boy retraces his steps back from night's fading shawl to the roadside, his van rested stone cold and etched in frost some distance away beside a fire hydrant.

How long had he been here?

At this point it was irrelevant, but still that voice haunted him from the depth of the thicket of locust trees. Ever dancing barefoot she waited his return, cold thin fingers drafting her name across his flesh with every whisp of wind that tumbled across his mud stained hands.