Fortress

Eucalyptus Grove

Eucalyptus Grove The park is closing; the temporary panic starts as runners and ornithologists head toward the gate, and fog the color of eucalyptus bark bends low, telling the great trees they can begin the muffled bray of saplings rubbing against their elders, the dolphin-squeal and rusty singing of a thousand difficult gates in the dark. It should be easy to talk as they talk, not like other trees in the park— the blunt-hearted willow hugging the streambed, dropping its lines like a Chinese poet— but with the admitted failure of talk. In this short light, the late-departures see the delicate attachment of smoky leaves that fall in gray apostrophes, the bumpy rosettes of the pods with Celtic crosses in the hearts, the valves that clamp so tight they never show their peppery black seeds. It should be easy to talk as they talk, shedding the false selves by degrees—I used to call them paint-by-number trees because it looks as though something is being put on, not taken off— 56 and it never seemed to matter to the tree how much it was losing; the others stood by singing as the tree would show the glitter underneath. The great hurt hangs on for a while, and then reveals the maps of mauve and rust, the lines of a true self no less mysterious. 57 ...