A Day With the Oak

Fiction

A tree, the Oak, a friend, the best kind that can be, is there to listen to me.

Let me share a story she told me.

— — Tulip

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The tree named Oak sighed, feeling glad that the summer was getting over. She was content yet anxious. She was satisfied that the summer had been good with long, warm days. She was apprehensive of the seasonal change around the corner, the cooler days. A stream ran with gentle gurgles near the ground on which the Oak stood. Lately, fog in the mornings in the past days meant the nights were cooling down slightly.

The summer came with plenty of green leaves and thick boughs to show off to other trees around her. Many robins had built a kind of “Robin-Nation” on the Oak’s branches. No other summer in the past decades of life did she have so many of them make their nests on the same tree. Perhaps the thickness of the leaves and the weather had to do something with their choices. The Oak had a hard time sleeping through summer, for the feathery guests woke with the dawn and started calling for mates, or they started flying in and out of their nests in search of food. The Oak wished he could give them more security with the leaves or branches for summer. When the storm struck the Oak like it was the worst enemy, the tree could do little to…