the man in the trees
Standing out there in the rain. watching as the spatter of tiny droplets carpets the dryly rough grit. Lumped in chunks. The patter carries on to a thick churn, drawing jerkily rigid maps through the patterns of light and shadowed ground. Splashes of earth water reverberate and drone to this longstanding vibrative pattern, joining in the choir of song.
Amidst the rivers pushing their way through the air, families and friends forge their flow. Hunched under umbrellas, skippingly laughing as the angled water pelts their hideout. Their relentless onward plod is watched in awe by a thin line of reluctant refugees, taking shelter underneath a ridged plastic walkway, somewhere in the southern clutches of this ramshackle haberdashed place. A man is still standing, motionless, eyes closed, head angled upwards, arms by his sides, with his back leaning on the huge monumental clock tower, the frontispiece of the townplace. He seems awkwardly at peace. The world ignores. The rain pours on.
Electricity mumbles through the thick expanse of pillowed cloud above. The sheltering man stays as still as stone throughout the storm. Not even a flinch as water cascades from his flattened hair over a dripping face, causing small trickles to drop from the end of his nose, and stream from eyelashes over cheekbones and wind-weathered skin to a clenched jaw. Small drips run trickles down arms and leave the tips of his fingers for smattering onto the concrete below. Upon closer inspection, it might be almost possible to see him quiver a slight shiver, as the unfaltering wind blows icicle gusts through dampened clothing. But he does not move. He is present for the duration.
Maybe he knows something that the rainsplashed public don’t. Caught in that moment, waiting for the precipitation to flow through him, as rivers pass on their journeys to the sea. Perhaps. Maybe he is sleeping, a quiet rest in the loudest moment. Maybe he had heard the news whispered by a hundred lips, of packing, of leaving, of loss. Maybe he stands in this spot every day, waiting for the one day when the flashlight ignites to take his thoughts up on firecracker breezed wires. Maybe this is his freedom. Maybe.
I wonder what his thoughts see through the darkness. Is he thinking of the pictures drawn by winds circling above? Is he drawing dreams in thin black marker pen on white card, flicking alternately between harsh shadow and harsh light? Is he stencilling words in his mind by writing them indellibly with the movements of his eyes? Maybe. Maybe all this and more. Maybe nothing. Maybe just the blank blackness of feeling.
A small group, shiny summer clothes dampened by stormrush, huddle together, standing in the sheltered alley. The warm mist from gently steaming takeaway food rises to the heavens yet is caught within the periphery and proliferates, punctuating the teatime air with little specks of hungry. Rain-dodgers making their way through stop and sniff the air; some are seen to visibly sigh as the nose detects wafts of warming food on this sopping day. Tiny scents lost in clothes as passers-by pass through. Groups and gases disperse, quietly making their way away, slinking to vanishing point. And then it starts.
A cold wind whips rainspots into claps and cracks and flashes. Within seconds, globular hailstones fall into the lying lakes, fenced in by concrete and urban sprawl. The noise of a million fingertaps drumming on tin rises its notepeaks into a din. The closeby world turns white in a matter of seconds, as iceflecks like tiny cannonballs bounce from the sky. But there is nobody there to witness this crazed freakstorm. I wonder about the sheltering man. Would he have been hit? Does he still stand there, eyes closed, head tilted upward?
Thoughts fade and time passes. Until the grey above darkens to a royal blue and purple cloudswirl, and the leafgrid shadow curls its fingers in front of this late evening skyskape view. For a tiny second, whilst in their everlong dance, it is possible to make out the shape of a man in the tree leaves. the man taking shelter. the outline of his form, eyes closed, arms by his sides, imprinted onto the sky. Perhaps it is where he belongs.
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