The Existential Pine

It rained all the way home from the milonga, hours and hours of spray, with the noisy slap, slap, slap obbligato of old windshield wipers. We were traveling down miles of a corridor formed by pines. They lifted their limbs in an existential contradiction of struggle and sheer joy in the same way a Sunday preacher lifts his arms, heavy with sin and mortal suffering, but finding redemption above. The trees drank their redemption from the sky and spread their arms with thanks.