For all the movement it was making, it was very silent. For all the movement around it, it was still very silent. At six stories tall, it is, like most New Yorkers, very slender. No longer green, one immediately knows this one has been around the block for many years. When my mother met my father, across the seas, it was here. When the Empire State Building was the tallest of its kind, it was here. When I had my coffee this morning, it was here still.

When the jackhammers were rattling earth in the pre-dawn hours today, it shed a few. When the man in the hardhat leaned against it to eat his sandwich in peace, it shed a few more. Every time it sheds a few, it bares a little more. In a place where exposing oneself is deemed a weakness, it’s rare to see such unapologetic yet silent display of openness.

In a city where everyone is racing to find their place, their purpose, it has in its lack of effort, found it.

Maybe it knows and is sad. Mayhap it laughs that in a few months it will be only a memory of what was there before the tall building took its place. Still my tree remains silent.