Beneath the Fir Tree - writing assignement #7

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his is a very hard assignment I had in creative writing class. We had to write like a young man who just murdered someone describe a lake, yet we could't mention the murder. I think I sort of failed at making the voice into a young male...

I feel very sorry for myself when i get these horrid assignements. They make me re-think my goals of becoming a writer. They also make me cry in frustration....



Sitting on the small wood pier Buddha style, hands lying down palms facing heaven I watch the day fading. The light growing weaker fails to penetrate the water but instead reflects dully the evening sky and surrounding trees back up like dead eyes. The reflection below becomes a darker simulation of the real world. Through this upside down place I see the last of the geese escaping south leaving mournful cries behind them which reverberate against the hills in a strange decadent way. Perhaps these were the older geese, crying out, upset that they were finally being forced to leave after all, knowing that they might not make it back next year and that death itself pursued them like the wind.

The lake has already lost it’s golden summer hue and was turning more monochrome as winter made it’s approach. Most of the trees lost their leaves and stood there, arms raised, as if they were waiting for someone to come dress them or perhaps imploring the sky for warmth and sun or simply begging God for salvation. A few meters away there is one who has a lost a limb and whose cut had closed over itself so that it looks like a gaping mouth howling at me.

In the distance there are a group of dark birds in a tree which fly off squawking loudly as if suddenly disturbed by an unseen danger. The pine trees dark silhouette cut the dim sky in a jagged territorial pattern claiming the little light left in it. Then there is everything that lies hidden below. Underneath the forest of seaweed, the plankton, the fish. Deep down. Even that would become it’s own little separate world cordoned off by the ice which would spread on the surface. A large silver casket sealing off the sun, the sky, the oxygen. Fish will sink to the bottom of the frozen lake like weighted corpses anchored to the ground. The carp uses his tail to bury himself deeply beneath the dark murky mud. He will wait for his moment in the shadows as I had waited, and he will know, as I knew.

I think of lighting up a cigarette but refrain, understanding and cooperating with the preparations and the restraint the earth around me requires. I admire the purity that winter demands of everything in it’s path. The crickets begin to chirp quietly in their secretive way pulling the strings of fate irrevocably forward towards the lake and I become lost in their compelling calls and the messages held within.

Nature is perfection but people fail to understand their part. Their humanity has been compromised by their gadgets into a false sense of believing they rule the earth. They no longer see the lake or the world they live. They have become mindless zombies imitating the other mindless zombies they see on their flat screen high definition televisions. But when they see me they remember who they are when I stand tall before them and say “Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do ..."

I pick up a small stone lying next to by foot, white as bone, cold as forgotten, and I kiss it.