A light wind was blowing waves through the old gnarled trees surrounding the small, familiar, farm house that stood before me. I could hear part of the roof tin on the old wood shed out in the backyard, rattled and knocked in the breeze, as it always has for as long as I can remember. It would be strange to me now if someone were to fix it. But the trees that the wind tugs its cold fingers through, are one less now, then they were in the fragments of colours, sounds, ghostly images and faces from the shards of my childhood. In those images I could remember giants that loomed high above me. Together they made the roof of a large, green, open aired fairy tale castle that I imagined myself in, on those hot summer days. When friends came to visit, hours were spent on those hot days, running to and fro, through my castle in the trees. But those blissful days are no more. I walk through those old, bright memories as the dark canopy above me filters the dying, blood red light in small, scattered speckles around me. I no longer feel like I am apart of that tall, home like-structure as I now have my own home in a town far away from here. But still, I am saddened as the dark, green trees around me, now stained with a wounded blood light are one less.
I walked to the edge of the backyard where the greenery thinned and fragments of the brilliant sunset could be seen through the trees. In the distance over the dry, brown paddocks, tall, tangled cabbage trees were sprinkled over the hills. But again their numbers are one less. In the corner of the yard where the summer sunsets would once pour their light over its large bundles of long, thin, stringy leaves, there once grew the largest of trees in all the neighbouring farms and I even once believed, as children do, that it was the tallest in the town. It was a grand old cabbage tree with long, twisting branches, perfect for climbing up high. Higher even than the hay barn further over the farm. The grand old branches were rough to touch, but that tough, messy, uneven surface helped me hold on when I climbed. Up above the house I climbed, to a height my mother told me not to go. But I never listened to her as I always felt safe within the trees grand embrace. Sometimes I would climb the roof of the old wood shed, dodging weak points, rust and holes so that I could venture up the other side of the tree. I was the only kid in town brave enough to do this. It was a very daring act back then. The branches would have been higher up and further apart than they may seem to me now. But I wouldn’t know and my fond memories will be no more.
Light poured in through a gaping hole in the canopy above me, like a searing, burning gash torn through the natural way of things. The sharp, bright light coming from the disk on the horizon, slowly sinking beneath the land, shone directly at me now, burning my eyes. As a light wind tossed strands of hair across my face my eyes began to burn for another reason as tears spilled over, streaking my cheeks. Long, misshaped shadows were cast at my feet where a jagged, lifeless stump stood. The last of the days light spilled over it like blood from a gaping wound.
