For the past year & change, I’ve been attempting to develop multiple Scot Pine saplings for various bonsai projects as a hobby.

Recently, one of my Scot Pine saplings in a group planting I put together passed away. Rather than remove the lasting image of the error on my part, I’ve opted to remove the bark down to the cambium & appreciate the final step all living things happen upon: death.

Dealing with death is an exhausting matter; cerebral & poetic, discussions of death deal in recollections of past events & postulations of what could’ve been, often intangible.

Maybe it’s a childlike hope that reflecting on a perished pine will help me appreciate the things around me that are still alive & worth caring for. Maybe it’s the appropriate thing to do.

Either way, I’ll leave this somber Scot pine settled in the soil to see a sign of what used to be & what will come to be.

Thanks for reading

© 2022 Zakariyas James. First shared here at theruminationcompilation.wordpress.com.