... artist, and now a young oak tree.
I was devouring a cake cup of raspberries and pistachio cream, sitting on the soft grass, unseeing the sparkling summer afternoon surrounding me.
I heard a delicate rustle coming from behind, and that triggered a few other sensations that were like a momentary clearing of the permanent fog in my head.
Very simple things, like the slow-stirring crown of the colossal willow a bit farther ahead; the underbrush abuzz; the pale, hazy sun behind the black lace of Jack pines--things unaccompanied by any thought. Any me.
I have little stamina to bear the vast beauty of what is essentially pure sensation--a state that we will perhaps maintain regularly once evolution finishes weaving a new gossamer layer around the human brain--but even with my meager abilities, my eyes remained radiant like that for another moment.
That's when I looked back and saw the young oak in whose shade I'd been sitting. I had of course noticed the tree before, but only now could I see it: still small but evenly spreading, and bursting with tender green. The tree too felt the change in my gaze and looked back.
I saw a tiny, fragile wasp nest hanging from a low branch like a paper lantern. The plaque set at the foot of the trunk was of burgundy stone framed in bronze, very cold to the touch. The inscription included a few lines from Longfellow's poem Evangeline, of which I aptly remember nothing other than forgetting and stars. She--Teri, not Evangeline--had been an artist, and she'd died at twenty-five.
A bit outside the perimeter of Teri's shade, someone had left crescent slices of watermelons, still glistening with bite marks. Teri likes that detail, I thought, and ambled to the bridge nearby.
Comments