Oaks
Sometimes I can love oaks.
The complexity of how their branches twist. The dark green, near sometimes to black. The acorns with their little caps, strewn all around in the fall. The strength and determination, standing each one alone, managing in a hot, dry land that fades everything else to straw by summer.
Sometimes I pity them.
How they reflect a land that is dry and poor most of the year. How they can never thrive or be luxurious, like a cedar or redwood. How they just get by, barely, and in a bad spell they become rocky grey bones lying in the crackly yellow grass.
The oaks, of course, do not care.
October 2026