tree would cry because it saw its pearls fall to the ground and sink into the earth and die or be robbed away by a man or a woman or a child that was not of the fisherman kind but of a greedy such and not of the kind with torn faces and dry-yet-wet eyes that would flicker open and rise at dusk and flicker shut and fall at dawn, who would sit in their boat no matter how small or how big or how much the wind rustled the sails that were either there or not there. it would miss such people. and sometimes it would let the pearls 