All things grow outward,
Upward from the Tree.
Spreading out,
All things attached-
natural, real.
And from this Tree,
blowing in the unknown wind.
Standing out from the unknown ground.
Reaching towards the unknown sky-
night or day or still, unknown.

But for the tree,
It is known.
All its many branches, are said to have been explored.
Though some of them forgotten,
lost, or out of bounds.
Owned by some secretly,
Under construction; yet to grow.
This is where we keep all the things we know.
All the things that are natural.
And visiting this tree,
are the birds.

And all, all the birds.
With all their very many wings.
Jumping and dancing-
fluttering in the unknown breeze.
There feathers and ideas.
Hidden muscles and meaning in these.
Where did they come from?
They didn’t grow on the tree.

No, not like the fruits.
Mushy pears, red apples and green bananas.
No, no not like the fruits.
They are from the tree-
All natural. Understandable-
They feed and nourish fertility.
Falling away, into nothingness.
Almost as if they never were.

From the tips of the tree,
This genre. An Art. Titled and told:
As it were “The great misunderstanding”.
Nothing worked, so much as happened.
The growth wasn’t towards anything.
Nor was the word growth strictly accurate.
That’s why the birds only hooted, and howled.
Sung and chirruped.
To the sun, they expressed surprise.
Singing gaily. Sometimes when something-
the elements foretold snow and sleet.
Rain, wind or something else equally mysterious,
the birds would pull about them their wings.
Feathers, as ideas of shelter.
Fore the Tree had no hollows.
It was solid and unholed.
Reliable and resolute until.

Until one day the Tree grew,
sprouting upon one large light brown limb-
a good many buds, like never before.
Violet and rich, the birds pecked.
The taste was sweet,
The nectar that bled down.
Felling down in droplets into nothingness.
The birds swooped in a frenzy.
One purple bud grew, besieged not by birds.
This bud was hidden, and grew on a very high branch-
in a completely different wing of the tree.
A mysterious wing, it grew bulbous.
Rich and swollen at its base, it looked like
the tail of an all but forgotten creature.

There was no real awareness of the when, or how-
but one day with the light that illuminated the tree,
shining from no great area or thing, sprung an umbrella.
With a wooden hold aft,
A translucent filament connecting the spurs.
the thing was huge, like some great flowering thing.
And just as it one day sprung into the world,
As if to be an omen or something more profound-
nothing. Nothing happened.

One darkening evening as the lighness faded,
there was a spattering of moisture in the air-
and a bird chanced to land under the unfamiliar thing.
It rained all the night. The bird felt a calm-
wrapped in its wing’s feathers.
This umbrealla. Hoooo!
Hoooo-hoooowl.
What a magnificent moment,
and in the morning a rainbow appeared
through the wet filament and the birds eyes bulged.
Gordon Bennett! This New-Squark!
Great Scott, truly. Never.

This news spread down the grape vine.
And they passed on messages by banana phone,
wireless, but no significant thing.
This was old stuff to the birds.
But umbrellas, or as they called them:
“Umbrelly, or wew-wews”
They could make their wet nights,
well… less wet. More comfortable they suspected.
They suspected a 9 percent rise in comfort.
There was a vote, and cordially it was decided.
They wouldn’t suckle upon the violet buds.
Birds waited. Oh yes, they can wait.
We’ve all seem them wait.
Some thing they’re still waiting.

The time came, and so did the buds.
they grew slowly, and in the night some were pecked.
Noxious scents of sweet torments were drempt-
the dreams of the birds,
oh the birds. Their dreams were filled.
Voluptuous growths the sprouts became-
though time had noticeably taken to slowing.
In the night one of the birds vanished.
And their flying on formation was peculiar for many days,
adjusting to their lost control over streamline,
dynamic flying that made them native to freedom.
Days flew by after that in the night also.
One bud peeled early revealing a white umbrella,
which was unexpected, strange and welcome to the birds.
The measured its size and expected it to be a likeness to its forefather.
If all the buds were to blossom, there would be shelter for each of the birds.
This was music to the birds tiny ear holes.
Their minds raced with small and simple thoughts.
This was grande, what a fruitful and happy time to be alive.
Julius the fallen, was forgotten in their aggrevated:
raptures of elation, excitement and expectation.
Would all the umbrellas be white with wooden handles?
Bets were mad. Hoots and howls.
The twits rang out, and seemed to echo through eternity.
Patience was thin the following day-
nights were restless. The birds shivered,
feathers rattling and tails rippling.
A cold set in, as if they were flying.
There was no mysterious breeze.

The next day, the umbrellas has all popped.
One full branch, laden to sagging with umbrellas.
Striking a fine slash of colour into the sky.
Colours of unimaginable splendour popped.
Blowing in now warm wind that gusted gently.
And the birds minds were wrapped.
Captivated to be transfixed.
And they all told tales, great tales.
Of snakes, colourful snakes that mesmorised.
And the void that devoured all things.
The image that stole their minds.
Every other branch forgotten.
Their wings forgotten.
There was a ballot, of preference.
Each bird chose an umbrella.
No flying near their new shelter. No, no.
Not at all, definitely not.
Waddling along awkwardly,
hilariously for each, watching their neighbour.
Waggling their short feathery rails,
gripping with scaled and talloned feet.
Laughing and chirruping-
A mockery of song, for the day had finally come.
Nobody wondered for Julius,
infact nobody thought to continue the search.
It had only been a day and a night.
But long enough.
Not much of anything was thought.
They had simple, small minds after all.

The bananas were cast aside.
They all lived locally.
So close by, it was wonderful.
They would all rise together, as they always had, and sing.
Sing a song of the joys of life.
How luxury had just appeared one day.
How lucky they were.
They were the best of times;
some birds still flew to get sunshine,
for a lot of the umbrellas limited their exposure.
The original umbrella was forgotten,
its rainbow, on a wet illuminated day-
all but ignored.
The birds were a comfortable race,
that needed very little and were happy.

More umbrella pods grew,
some were feasted upon others went on to grow.
And the birds were able to move to colours sizes and translucencies that reflected them more on an inner spiritual level.
The time of plenty was upon them.
Choices, options and the sweetness of the fruits intoxicated.
They birds would waddle-
laughing gaily at their laze that had set in from not flying.
Their lots camraderie through the distance of umbrellas, reaching far and wide,
their discarded green banana phone technology and their wings’ feathers.
All unnecessary ideas.
The fruits became the norm.
The birds tastes had evolved.
And the Tree continued to grow.
The umbrellas grew towards a zenith,
and the greenery soon caught up and intermingled.
And in that mingling, the birds became serperated from eachother,
and the illumination of natural light.
They grew enshrouded in darkness-
and the dark grew all about them.
And they never slept.
Fore they had no idea of the time.

Where they had once laughed at their wobbling bodies,
waddling up branches. They were humbled, and afeared.
They knew nothing else than their umbrellas.
Their feathers had lost their lustre,
where first there was a fear of flying without Julius-
There was now a widespread fear of all things.
The umbrellas, gave them comfort however;
always mesmerizing in their radiant colour that seemed to glow.
The birds eyes grew accustomed to the dark.
Large bulbous things, twice the size of their heads, and for that they had two of them; making them slouch down and look beneath them.
Finally their feathered wings became bare.
Lustreless, sickly white feathers fell in the stillness.
Each feather glowed, and was mourned for.
The birds skin was pale and dry.
Red capillaries and veins of purple pulsed underneath pockered skin.
The birds in their severed contact sung a low harrowing song.
Not vigor or wistful whistle.
Brightness had abandoned the birds,
and with the lost spark of illumination faded their spirits.

They were all conscious of their bodies,
they sat their shivvering or waddling small distances.
Too self aware, paralysed from their congregation,
hyper aware, their eyes became their only sense.
They were frozen from skin to soul.
Puckered and pathetic.
Some birds connected through a mental connection they thought-
thinking that perhaps some birds had continued to follow the rainbow umbrellas.
And this brought some solace.
Whenever a thought like this occured,
a nearly featherless bird,
would tap his brush like-
feathery tail on the perch and waddle a few paces,
squinting up with a tremendous effort.
The bulbs of their eyes eventually dragging their vision back down to their pallid and scaled clutches.

This was ongoing for a time.
Repetitious lives were always wont to happen,
the birds knew shapes and size.
Mathematics was a gift to all birds.
And so they were, caught in such a circle;
they understood.
And oh my, in this time they changed.
Not for better or for worse-
the birds didn’t think in these terms.
Its the nature of all thing.
This they had learnt from the many branches of they tree that they’d explored in days and nights gone by. Oh my, yes.
they had seen a good many things,
this was a respite, and time to cogitate on all things comprehendable.
And the perspective was dazzling in the glow of the umbrellas.
Frightfully so, in the silent song that was
a highpitched tingling felt only by pimpled skin and twitching senses.
Grains and fibres of being. Nerves of some otherwordly substance-
did the birds possess. On no scale invented.
Not frozen pumpkin.
Not pucks of ice hockey.
Only the wood of the tree was hard.
And this was what the birds had felt to have in common with the natural tree.
Of which they shared, this one substance. Unnamed and unknown.
Only seen, oh yes, my. It was seen.
Those sweltering eyes.
Sweating necks. Tears ran like…

Like, it was.
And it was indeed raining.
Some that had the strength looked up and saw.
Others looked up, but their necks; like broken or unused cranks-
moth eaten rope, snapped.
And with the snap they fell.
Fell into the abyss.
The tears. The tears continued to run.
but perhaps they were of joy now, for this colour.
even in darkness, this was the brightest most beautiful turn.
More elegent, and joyous in its turn than a well executed aerial swoop.
They gorged their eyes for as long as they could.
Revelation! illumination in lightness.
Some of the birds squarked.
And many more fell from their perch.
The moment was a cacaphony to their earholes.
Striking change had been broken,
the lugubrious task of waiting. Joy, how had the rain got through?
How had the green receeded?
great circles, they knew.
but the magic of the unknown was always to remain in some of its many senses.
Beyond the comprehension of the crying birds, as the rain came down and they scratched their claws, and rubbed together their frail and pathetic fleshy little arms. They were blissfully happy, though they couldn’t show it on their dreary and strangely dull faces.
Oh and they cried.
Oh my, they continued to cry for the night.
and when they closed their eyes, finally from their exhaustion.
Unrelenting emotion taking toll.
The minds spinning whirl,
The birds minds raced, and then came crashing to silence.

Sleep engulfed them.
Peace overflowed.
And in their silent rest they dreamed.
Oh and they dreamed and drempt new words,
and dreamt songs to express their startled emotion.
They could see now. In their tiny skulls,
resting behind their closed eyes, they saw more and thought more than ever before they allowed themselves. Flying, jumping, dancing or waddling, they had never explored like this.
Incomparable.
Only their flood of tears, the downpour explained it.
And that was because of the history of the birds,
as they comprehended it. They knew nothing like this had happened in their collective memory. They discussed it at great length while they slept- they thought.
And this only scratched the surface.
That surface.

They awoke, oh yes.
Oh my, that’s right.
they awoke, to the colour.
Oscillating, bright and blinding.
Cry shock, mortified blinding brilliance.
Squarks made them rouse.
The grumbled, and gutteral dusty lungs of the unspoken.
Dust and age-old laze broke free from beaks.
soon they’d regained their senses, and more.
Though unfeathered, still.
they waddled, invigorated and sung.
The rainbow was permanent. It resonated into their souls.
it charmed and mesmorised.
Some were hypnotized and unable to sing, or communicate.
just stuck, looking up. Unknown strength, bliss in the fresh breathing.
Bliss of beauty. Benign and bright colours intermingling in an unfathomable array.

The greenery around them had receded.
Receded far.
Quite expansive in actual fact.
And the facts shone, as some of the bird realized curiously.
And where once there had been sky, which became branches and their entrapment-
Now was branches. Filled. Filled with the buds of the umbrella.
The time of plenty was back upon them.
Beaks sang while their eyes smiled comprehendingly.
Oh yes, comprehending race that they were.
Geometry, The Nature, Affects and Special Effects.
Cry almighty. Wish for such, as to be as it was.

That is, as it was thought.

The buds blossomed, quickly.
Thought the time was perhaps the same.
It wasn’t percieved so,
and the birds knew. Elation changed perception.
and that was a frightening word,
birds were never wont for using that word.

this is because “outside”, was larger than their “inside”. Bigger than their wings,
larger than their bulging eyes. and they occupied a mid-ground in exploring these two things.

The birds meditated the next night,
waiting and thinking, seeing what could next hap.

As I said, the tree’s, greenery had retreated beneath them now.
Seemingly far beneath them.
And it was a great fear that struck the birds the very next morning as they awoke.
Not for vertigo, for their historic mind was still memorably accustomed.
no, not heights. Although maybe it was.
There was no singing-
understandably they felt exposed.
But perhaps there lay something deeper,
something they hadn’t thought immediately, but was sunk in its recognition.
Their naked bodies were withered, but refreshed from their emotions.
The healing quality of heightened emotions was understood only recently, and some birds were dubious to this ideas, for the cynical nature of the bird was what had made it so successful. They were a patient conglomerate, a great parliament of people. Equal in their expression of self. For what one lacked another made up for.
This was another gift of their comprehension of mathematics.
The secret formula of percentage was said to be a play of words.
From a bird that sought refuge upon a giant boat, carved of the tree, that fell.
He has a great plumage, of black and white and helped put wind in the sails of the vessel before it plummeted. He was great, but surely he lacked.
In the digress was the fathomable thought that all things are equal, and how they express themselves in their physical state, reveals their mental state.
Though basic, there was a far greater form of the idea present in one wing of the tree’s seals branches.

And so the tree had died off.
Withered, and bent.
Like the shriveled and now drooping skin of the birds.
the tree had spent itself.
Some thought this had come from the umbrellas.
The natural order was disrupted.
The Tree had moderated its own growth perhaps.
The birds, that were not of the tree had suffered.
but only as much as the Tree had.
all things equal.

But indeed, were they?
Was this a measurable thing?

And the tree continued to fade into brownness,
and all around them umbrellas sprouted.
the birds waddled with inefficiency.
Trying to control their sprouting.
hoping for the rain to still find a path,
to fall through and nourish the land.
They worked,

Not tirelessly, they aren’t the heroes of this story.
I must admit this now before its too late. I won’t say I’m sorry either.
All I will admit is that under this umbrella I needn’t make excuses or explain more that I deem necessary. I hope you are following, there is a point to all this. Please friend. Go-on. Go. Yes, oh my yes, go. Go.

And so like one that has fallen in love,
the birds had fallen.
And yet some had not.
Not fallen so much, no.
Not literally. Like literally, that throw away emphasis.
You understand adverbs, so did birds.
They would hoot and howl to no end sometimes.
Especially in the mornings.
they were shameless, I told you all about their waiting,
their feasting gluttony and waddling.
Disgustingly unnatural.
Only resembling nature in the mush pairs I mentioned.
Oh yes, oh my.
Two of them, rubbing and mushing together as they waddled.
Sure, a time of plenty, but when will there be put boundaries-
on the unnatural.

This the birds, surely didn’t comprehend.
For it falls not in the cycle of geometry.
No it falls in a much larger hole.
Six times larger.
And its depth was that of ten.
For that was the depth the birds had dropped dates.
And the dates took 10.
A perfect 10, to make a noise.
And the noise they made sense of.
From that they drew all things,
Geometry, maths, luck and, ideals of perfection.
All the most atletic birds had ten tiny feathers.

I don’t really know all this,
but I assume, I overheard this on an open banana frequency.
-You should never trust those things.
But what a story, the added dynamism of the 10th feather.
That really tickled me.
Captured me, I believe it anyway.
Square on and fully, you understand.

So the tree died.
It withered and fell into the abyss.
The top branches came crashing down.
The infinite strength that bloomed outwards from the trunk was starved of the umbrellas that had grown of its own womb.
This was a sick unjust occurance for the birds.
They who cried that day also, but not with the aid of the rain.
That occurance had been removed.
indeed buffered against and blocked out completely.
Time struck like an unhealthy gong the day everything crashed to finality.
And the birds, still bare of skin, terminally morbid despite their best efforts;
they took the fall as they did all things by that stage-
Wide eyed.

And I suppose it would have been impossible to read.
Those poor, freckled, feckless faces.
Tragic turmoil bubbling in their veins.
What a storm must have reigned.
Above, Below and Within.

All of this I have translated from the leaf that I found.
I found it blown into my path this Autumn gone.
It took time and effort in translating, and so many bits are still without comprehension on my own side.
Like when they are confused, their words and hoots and shouts for confusion is confusion, but not as we know it.
Their writing was tiny and written down the stem of a leaf.
Tiny. I mean TINY.
Smaller than the smallest thing.
So I wonder if it was written before or after?
I like to think it was written afterwards.
Because that way something happened to them, and again they changed.
Surely they would have had to have grown,
by surety! Imagine the advancements possible to such a meet and patient people.
But they wrote it. Plain as anyone’s anything. Just there, written down the strand.
Down the bit, the bit that holds it ALL together.
Its a miracle, and i’m only just a smidgin into it.
There is more. so much more.
What they achieved!
Despite themselved you know- it has me captivated.
I’m both excited and motivated.
I can’t make anything up, I have to know it.
And everything is proofed 7 times.
Its a miracle form halfway. That makes the hairs from my head stand up-on my back.
David Goliath Burnham in all his breakfast clubs ability.

One thing that REALLY drives me on though, what happened to the birds.
They like, literally wrote this. So where are they now?
are they among us?

Oh my, oh yes, god that would make me sing.

Person 2: Oh yeah… “Among us” indeed. He laughed. “Haha, gods” Eyes wide, uncrying.