Touching

Unexpected highlights come and go in an average day, and can be easily disregarded unless distractions are cropped out of the picture.  This afternoon when I decided to photograph the hazy sun surrounded by a soft greenish rim, I thought a couple of trees in our yard would provide an incidental frame. I didn’t know they would become the primary focus.

Maple buds swelled on the branches to the right, while the towering oak on the left held evidence of its new life locked inside, still waiting.  I overlooked these details, the fact the trees were alive.

And so, I pointed the camera out the window.  The lens zoomed automatically, clicked in-and-out until the image came clear.  Interventions tugged: a growling stomach, a ringing telephone, a hammering husband in the next room. The shutter snapped.

When I viewed the image on the computer screen, I discovered more than I’d expected.  Delicate, twiggy tree fingertips gently tapped each other, two living things connecting.  Associating.  The sun stood behind them as witness, a glazed, blind-but-seeing eye that seemed to understand the trees’ slight but distinct touch.  It had been celebrating for hours what I'd overlooked until that moment – the divine mystery of relationship.