She has seen many things and the passage of time is so familiar as to have lost meaning to her. She is old, she is glorious. Every few years a branch breaks off but always there are more growing. Perhaps one day age will win over growth and she will pass fully into the land of the dead, but until then she remains, Grandma Willow.
I have circled beneath her branches, made magic around her trunk, as have many before me, of varied traditions. None of that mattered to Grandma. She welcomes all as she will. Many have drank beneath her, have been raucous, have been silent, have done drugs and drunk and stayed sober. Have fed animals from her branches, have dangled feet over the ledge of her massive arms.
The squirrels dart along her branches, the birds sing in her leaves, and all the while she rests, growing and dying, and breathing, always breathing as we move on, and she remains.