Photograph

Walking among the baobabs under a cerulean sky it seemed as though I had stepped into a different world, and left the rest of them behind. I was alone, but the company of the wrinkled and massive baobabs was enough. They whispered through their branches at me in some foreign tongue, and I wondered if I could learn again the language of the baobabs, learn to commune with the trees and the earth and the sky. I looked up at the sky and squinted in the sunlight. I looked back out over the horizon and tilted my gaze up, watching as the sky turned darker as I trained my eyes to the zenith, where the sun burned hot and bright. The gleam of the sun made my shoulders warm, like some great warm hand which comforted me with its gentle touch. The back of my neck was a little wet from the sweat; though beautiful, it was //hot// in this world that I had wandered into. I searched the expansive land around me for some other sort of life, but there were only the baobabs. Their gnarled and crooked branches meandered their way into heaven, grasping at the air with arthritic fingers like some ancient rabbi searching with his hands to seek answers from above. I listened again to the trees, but they were whispering too soft; I couldn't make out what they were saying. Either that, or they were speaking in a language I had not yet learned, or maybe I had forgotten it. I looked again at the sky, and then at the ground beneath my feet. It seemed arid and parched, but still there was life. I listened for the crackling of the grass, and I spotted a small insect scurrying in the dust. It moved with frantic purpose, and I wondered what the simple desires of an arthropod would be-- food, water, and companionship. I longed for the simple life of the sky, the grass, the baobabs and the insect, to set down my burdens and let my shoulders be surrounded by light, but I still could not understand the language of the baobabs. Their whispering was just the rustling of the breeze in the branches. My forehead was beginning to glisten, and I turned around and walked back to where I came from. Maybe I would be able to understand the baobabs tomorrow.