Fibres that make strands that entwine to make strings that in turn turn about themselves to make rope. As thick as a baby’s arm and coiled all snake-like around your own arm. And tight, tight at your wrist yet loose is the rope’s tail. You grip the helical body that runs out and up to be looped over and knotted about the knots of a gnarly branch. A hefty pull tells you it can take your weight and you keep it taut and in tune with your sinews as you run, arm outstretched like the class swat with a very pregnant answer. No time to talk to teacher though; the bank falls away and gives way to water and to your sway. Out in an arc prescribed by the oldest physical laws you swing, body stretched rigid by the constant correction of momentum.
A brief freedom, fleeting enjoyment, to leave the earth, to deviate and veer in another vector; albeit bent. And albeit all too brief, less than a pan’s flash, as into the very unforgiving tree’s trunk you curl back to – and crash.