rain

A fog is filling the atmosphere outside my window and all the colors are muted and fused with grays. It makes me want to sit in the grass and look at the worlds living beneath, under, inside, hidden, beneath the wet, vibrating surface. I want to go feel a tree, look at the bark, rub it, I want to study the dirt, pick it apart, slide my fingers into it until all its secrets are revealed. I want to play with the smooth stones in the river, and watch the fish and frogs flee my terrorizing feet.


I wrote that shortly after I woke up yesterday. It rained all day, and just as I got out of school it stopped, leaving a nice soft mist and sunlight making everything glow. A lovely little creek nestled between two family farms invited me to walk along its bank. I couldn’t decline. And, it seemed my dream from the morning would come true. Rainbow colored rocks and grasses. Pink, blue, green, grays, deep reds and dark blues, each rock was beautiful like a jewel, and there were ten thousand jewels, and rainbow colored grasses covered in tiny diamonds reflecting the soft light of the atmosphere, and then I saw the trash. Little bits of humanity here and there. More patterns. More colors. More textures. Not so bad. And then I saw the first of the deaths.

It was a blue heron, big, and painted with beautiful cool shades of gray, like my grandma's hair, or the misty mountains in the distance. The feathers ruffled next to the greens and creams of the grasses. And the shape was so new to me. What a shape. But at the same time, it was so awful to see this angel lying disfigured next to the trashy riverbank. Why did it die?
I began to walk along the bank again, the heron still with me, and we then met another death. This one I almost stepped on. It was a big, beautiful bullfrog, lying on its back, ruby red blood dripping out of its black eyes. I was so surprised. I walk on, only to meet a large, dead crab, lying on its back, half empty, half full. The shell the colors pearl and ivory. I think "what on earth are you doing here? What is this place? This sacred cemetery farmland. I ran into some children playing under a bridge. I am reminded of my infinite wonderings along a similar creek of my childhood. Looking back. The crows called, the ducks dashed, the wind wept across the farmland, and I rode home, colors and creations in my head.