The Bone Tree

From beneath a long frozen earth ancient human bones surface, they rise far enough for an eye-socket to be seeded. A sapling grew from out of that skull. In time the skull became a tree. Like many tree’s its skeleton was on the outside but the bone-tree’s bark was harder. It grew gnarled and knotted, grimly striated were it knurled as if a twisted growth had tortured wood into blackened bone. It’s leafage was scant, spiked, and leathery, thorns were it canopy. Some claimed it to be an old apple tree, yet no fruit did it ever bear. After hundreds of fruitless years it fell, stuck down by its own inflexibility, its unbending bones broken forever. From beneath a long frozen soil where once a garden flourished a serpent slid away seeking more blind eyes.