I fumble for words in the bottomless backpack of experiences I carry with me. I expect them, these words, to be in one stuff-sack or another. Perhaps they got mixed up with the bent-gate carabiners or maybe they’re camouflaged by the extra socks…
Eventually, I stop searching. Propping my head against the rumpled bag of gear, I exhale carbon dioxide and the need to apply words, like dental office happy-face stickers, to a perfectly good moment.
The trees don’t mind. They’re sun-dappled and rustling with the predictability of an afternoon breeze, talking amongst themselves of days filled with twenty-three hours of sunlight. The water stretches out an infinite reflecting pool, mirroring trees and gathering clouds and memories of nesting trumpeter swans.
There is a soul-grounding stillness to this moment, this wrinkle in time’s linen shirt. “Be present…” the grass offers, inclining stalk and blade toward the sun’s warmth.
I am present. I am stillness.
A loon calls from across the water and soon the answer comes on the wings of quiet rain. The words will find me just as the rain has, of this I am certain. For now, the ground speaks for me.
–
{ 4 comments }
