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    The Flower and the Tree
    The Flower and the Tree
    The Flower and the Tree
    Ebook46 pages40 minutes

    The Flower and the Tree

    By Hank Gross

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    About this ebook

    The Flower and the Tree is a fable for all ages, showing that all lifetimes, no matter how "long," are really the same: one. Here a tree, to whom a day is just a tiny sliver of his life, becomes friends with a flower, to whom the day is his whole life, from birth to death.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHank Gross
    Release dateFeb 22, 2010
    ISBN9781452384740
    The Flower and the Tree
    Author

    Hank Gross

    I have been a writer and editor for over 40 years, beginning in New York City in the 60's, where I freelanced for various magazines and worked as an editor at the National Examiner tabloid newspaper. I also did research and writing for the Reader's Digest (Hell's Angels, Motorcycle Safety) and flew to Louisville to interview (in poetry) Cassius Clay before he won the title and became Ali. His mother was the sweetest woman and made the best potato salad I've ever had. I have had novels and non-fiction published by major publishers such as Ballantine, World, Arbor House, Peter Pauper Press, and William Morrow, as well as many short stories and articles in major national publications, such as "The Boy Who Ate New York" in the National Lampoon, 1991. (This can be read online at my website, http://www.hankgross.com. I have also taught English and writing to students from Asia, Africa, and Latin America. I studied street photography with Randall Warniers at MIT, as well as figure photography. I won first prize in the December 1995 Popular Photography contest and was later profiled in the magazine (August 1997). Recently, I have taken up painting (acrylics), which can be viewed on my website. My email is: hankgross@gmail.com

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      Book preview

      The Flower and the Tree - Hank Gross

      THE FLOWER AND

      THE TREE

      Hank Gross

      Published by Hank Gross at Smashwords 2010

      © 2010 Hank Gross All Rights Reserved

      http://www.hankgross.com

      License: This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

      1

      Throughout the long and starry night, the towering pine tree had been aware of a persistent jiggling in the vicinity of one of its roots, a kind of annoying tickle that came in fits and starts but which refused to go away no matter how emphatically the tree tried to make known his displeasure at the disturbance.

      Nighttime, after all, was when he rested—when the tubes that transported food and water along his stem rebuilt themselves and his chlorophyll was quiet and his bark returned its store of heat to the cool air and his leaves relaxed from the long day of breathing and prepared for another day of transpiring a ton and a half of water toward the sky. And nighttime, too, was when he was able to listen most clearly to the thrilling silence of the universe, to apprehend the awesome whisper of eternity, and to notice, and indeed to look forward to, the quiet little curriculum that played itself out as the period of darkness proceeded—the emergence of the gypsy moths around midnight, the prowling of the raccoons and the beavers, the sensuous blooming of the datura at precisely four o'clock, and the silvery glide of the moon as it traveled from one horizon to the other.

      Now, however, as the faintest hint of dawn began appearing on the horizon, the pine tree's initial agitation had given way to curiosity. For the jostling was not only continuing but was growing stronger—and it wasn't a worm or a beetle or an underground trickle of water. Obviously, it was a sprouting seed of some sort—but what variety of seed the tree could not, for the life of him, figure out.

      He had, over the centuries, seen many such germinating seeds; had indeed started out as one himself. Most of them, it had been his observation, had never amounted to much. But this one was different. It had an insistent vitality to it, and the tree, in spite of the basic reserve in his nature, found himself actively looking forward to making its acquaintance.

      The tree looked down at the ground surrounding his trunk and gave a shrug. He would just have to wait and see, he told himself. Life was a funny thing; you couldn't rush it. It just ran along at its own speed whether you liked it or not. And who should know more about life than him, he reflected with easy assurance; he'd certainly seen and experienced plenty of it.

      He was, after all, over four hundred years old, a large, gnarled, good-natured vegetable in the prime of his life—a tree with a

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