A Man and a Tree II

Before I saw the tree, I sensed it.

Not as an object, but as a presence—like a low note already resonating in the chest. As I moved closer, the heaviness I carried began to loosen, strand by strand, as if the burden had always been optional. In myth, the tree often appears as axis mundi, the silent center around which worlds turn. “There are things known and things unknown,” Aldous Huxley wrote, “and in between are the doors.” The tree stood behind one of those doors, unseen but undeniable.