oak tree ponderings

Have you ever wondered why oak trees grow the way they do?

The gnarled branches, perhaps, tell a story of the tree's life...

Each bend and curve- a moment in the past that moved them or scared them...
And only when the tree has grown out past that time, can we see the life map illustrated up the growth...
A reflection of the path worn on the face of the aging plant?

Maybe there is muscle memory in their bark and feelings flow through the sap, just as our emotions ride the tides of our veins...

And maybe sometimes it just becomes too much for the tree and its sap has to bleed...
The feelings must run out and escape from the pain it holds.
Is the sap their tears?

What would my tree look like?

Would my branches have grown up to the sky, reaching like hands feeling towards the divine during my times of expansive bliss I felt in the desert?

Would there be a knot every foot or so... To show the knot I felt in my core each time I spiraled into panic and anxiety and darkness?
Would my contracted fear be drawn as disease eating away the life of the tree in little holes and decay?

And what would this moment in time look like once it climbed up and was shown in a branch?

Would it be broken?

Would it bear any leaves at all?

Or would this moment in my life be sculpted in the gnarled oak tree as the base of many branches that are yet to grow?

But I suppose we can't ever see the present moment in a tree...

We must wait until it has grown past it and moved along in life to see the story unfolded... to recognize the bigger picture painted in the bark...