This is just a tree on the side of a house I normally walk past on the way to the store. It’s interesting to me that it seems almost invisible as I approach the soccer field. I should say trees rather than tree. It seems to be a collection of them, though I suspect they have a common root structure. It was almost sunset as I passed this time, the light shining directly on the trunk. It became something more than just a tree. It became monstrously large and anything but invisible. It’s a eucalyptus, and some eucalyptus trees have a way of growing absolutely for ever unless a stop is put to them. As a boy I remember climbing in a friend’s eucalyptus tree — I was not half so brave as my friend who climbed almost out of sight — but I also remember when the city came by with large trucks and cut it down to almost nothing. It was considered dangerous, or dangerously large. But I also remember it growing back. And remember it growing stubbornly back again and again. A few years ago I drove past that same tree and it seemed almost as large as it seemed when they first cut it back. I remember thinking that its roots must go all the way to China. Nothing could hold it back for long. But had they done nothing, it may well have turned into this magnificent and ominous tree on the side of a house lending shade to the soccer field and frightening no one.