Looking Up
Over the years, I’ve had little plots of ground to call my own. Some were large, most were small. Mostly, the typical subdivision. A house. A front yard. A backyard. The latter was where the magic happened, for me. A privacy fence gave privacy of a sort. Combined with the magic of the mind I could stand outside and survey my kingdom.
Oddly enough, the wind in your hair and the sun on your face feel pretty much the same regardless of the reality of the horizon. You only need look as far as you want to see or are able to see. Maybe it’s a small flower. Maybe it’s a big tree. Maybe it’s just grass bending to the wind. It matters not. It’s all about the day, and the time, and whatever chill is in the air.
This morning, on the current patch of ground I call home, I stood outside, beneath trees whose tops I could once touch with an extended hand and watched them bend and shake in the prevailing breeze, making soft sounds. I enjoy looking up into them, listening, and imagining how big they’ll be in another ten years, and another, until 200 or 300 years have passed and they’re in their old age, and I am so far gone, no one will remember the sound of my voice.