Windfalls
After all
A tree stands on a windswept hillside. Alone between the darkening heavens and the stony earth, it raises bloom-filled branches toward the sky. A low sun kindles the storm clouds that brood above it, warms the wood of its broken trunk, ignites the blossoms that cram its gnarled limbs.
The tree has been split almost in two -- perhaps by lightning, perhaps by wind, or by the weight of its own fruit in some too-fecund autumn long ago. Half of it now sprawls unflowering along the ground. But the living half of the tree still reaches skyward, its limbs so cloaked in bloom that the blossoms seem to hover in the storm-charged air. White flowers cluster on even the smallest twig, and in the photograph each bloom shines like a candle flame.
It is that cloud of flower-light that first draws the eye. Soaring and trapped beneath the glowering sky, tha ... read full excerpt from Windfalls: A Novel ebook
