Still in the realm of Ise, north of the shrines, just a few klicks before the start of the Ise-ji sits — huh — this tree, this green-puff beauty, this product of untold hours of manicure and love and shaping, cumulus, rotund yet elegant, made all the more elegant with the deliberate backdrop — yakisugi, charred Japanese cedar, whole unbroken wall, like an inverted Chelsea gallery, from white box to black wall, making that shrub pop, making the rest of the world feel flat, two-dimensional, boring, insipid, ain’t got nothing on this tree, this bushtree, once propped up with two wooden stakes, those stakes still there but worn down to nubs, holding nada, from verb to noun mere props, this tree needs no help, nothing to lean on, in fact the world leans on it, this whole road leans on this tree, this tree makes the road and the road knows it, pays alms to this tree, genuflects before the tree, this tree we saw yesterday, walking this road on a grey day in May.