Wishful Summer

The world is drifting and the air is full of dancing and movement as the thistles, once tall and proud, vivid and purple, now hunched and brittle and graying on their crowns, release their seedlings onto the wind to be carried far across these hills and green fields. This morning I stood a long moment at my window while the world blinked its eyes open, stretched and slowly sped up and watched the wispy tendrils of fluff drift past me, their many arms splayed wide like the fragile, pale bodies of spindly spiderlings carried on the new breeze of dawn. They hovered and spun, competing with the paper wasps for the sun's favor, and then whipped away to dance unseen before other sleepy windows and dreaming bodies.

While Duncan roams the grass, chasing these alabaster whisps and pouncing on wiry, red twigs, the shape and curve of grass snakes, I have stood motionless on the gentle slope of the hillside, listening to the doves silhouetted on the eves, reaching out my palm to catch passing bits of fluff as they drift past, cradling each gently in the curve of my hand and making wish after whispered wish before releasing them into the air once again.

I don't know where the idea came from but I have somehow convinced myself with the certainty of a child, that if the seedling is borne aloft and is carried away into the haze of the sun, if it travels far without touching the ground or skimming the surface of the sharp grass or catching itself on the severe, dark iron of the fence, that the wish will come true and that my daydreams will drift forever across this land, waiting to be seen by new eyes and touched by other, gentle hands.

(Music by Abel Korzeniowski, from the incredible film, "A Single Man.")