green bed

It smelled good to me, better than any perfume, and when I passed under the branches of the trees, the ground became soft. A little wind was coming from down in the valley that I could see, and it caught the trees almost one at a time. I loved the rustling of the leaves above me. I walked on up the slope until I was out in the grass again, were the grass was thick, and there I lay down. It was damp there, because it had rained in the night, but it was good. I looked off towards the village. I could see men and women working in the vegetable gardens, and beyond that the farmers in the fields. People were picking weeds out of the earth. That’s what it looked like to me.

But my mind was on the groves of trees here and there, and far away, and the blue of the sky. I lost myself. I felt loose. I felt my skin. It was as if I was humming and the humming filled my ears, but I wasn’t humming. And it was so sweet. It was the way I felt sometimes before I went tosleep. I wasn’t drowsy. I wasn’t sleeping. I lay still on the grass and I heard little tiny creatures around me in the grass. I even saw the flutter of little wings. I looked right before me, and there was a world of them, these tiny creatures, so very tiny, tumbling over the pieces of grass. I let my eyes move slowly towards the trees. They had the wind in them again and were dancing back and forth. The leaves of the trees looked silver in the sunlight, and they never stopped moving even when the breeze died away.

The earth was a bed under me. The cries of the birds were a song. They streaked across the sky above me so fast I could barely see them. Sparrows. And then beside me, I saw right in front of me tiny flowers growing in the grass, so very little I hadn’t notice them before, flowers with white petals and yellow hearts. The breeze grew strong and the branches above me moved with it. Leaves came down in a shower, a silent rain.

But a woman was coming. She came out of the groves of trees down teh hill and made her way up towards me. I knew I should get up our of respect for her, but i felt so good here on the sweet grass adn that humming was going on as if I was doing it, all through me, and I only looked at her as she came. I didn’t have sense enough to know it, but these moments on teh grass under the tree had been the first time in my whole life that I’d ever been alone. I only knew that this peace was broken, and had to be broken. What was time that I could spend it here staring until the world lost all its hard edges? Finally, I climbed to my feet, and I felt as if I was waking up from deep sleep.