Plum Inspired

I attacked her branches vigorously, clipping crossed limbs, suckers and waterspouts that reach straight to the clouds. The day, too early for the warmth we'd been getting, bright, sunny, bee-dazzled. The bees flitting from pink bud to pink bud, racing me for who would reach the branch first, before it was severed from the framework, to debris on the ground. I pulled the tallest ladder to the tree, wedged to the trunk by two branches, checked for steady ground and climbed to within one step from the top. Bees eye view of the world. No limit to the success I felt to see the vase shape of its limbs open up to the sun, with each cut I'd made. Forty minutes from branch to branch and nearing the top and the end, I turn slightly to make sure the last few cuts were right. When my life toppled slowly to the ground. Ladder sank, one leg digging deep into the soil and the ladder fell out from below me. I tossed the clippers with one hand, while holding a limb with the other. Still sensing security, when the sound of a crack and the movement of my body downward, connected. In the blink of my eyelids, I was sliding rough, rubbed skin to bark. Chin snapping upward on a crotch unseen, as my legs hung loosely below. No step to take that would find solid surface, until my back and shoulder hit the ground. My glasses flew off somewhere, with the impact. I lay startled and laughing, tree limb in hand. I knew I would be bruised some and scraped for sure, but all bones intact. The ladder had fallen away in such a slow motion, I saw myself as Bugs Bunny reaching the end of a cliff and with surprise, seeing no land beneath his feet, legs moving to touch soil, when in amazing speed gravity came up and caught him, as his body rushed to the ground. That tree was so plum inspired, it pruned me in a snap of a branch.