This morning I noticed a twice-jointed birch tree standing next to two others. The two were bowed permanently by some fierce wind. Unlike them, this tree had a joint, a shift of direction, in its trunk, perhaps six feet off the ground, directly into the space out of which came that brutal wind. Such defiance.

A few feet farther up, the trunk, having proven its independent ways, abruptly corrects itself, as though enough defiance is enough and, the point being made, returns to reaching toward the sky.

Two didn't break but are permanently bowed; the third asserted itself and stands, despite its record of deviations, taller than the others of its own kind.