A New Sign
A new sign began to appear when I woke up that morning. As I rose, over my head I saw the fluttering of the wings of small tan birds that circled over me like clouds of butter.
They dripped into my eyes and held me there as calmly as a strap around a pole driven deeply and firmly into the earth, reaching much farther down than the roots of the tall scheming trees that grew around my small cabin, while their branches grew up and up and up into the sky, seemingly forever.
I didn’t know what to call the sign at first.
Was it my personal sign or had it appeared to all as all it could be?
The tension in me grew, and then I knew that the sign was only a fleeting, teasing thing, meant only to sustain a tone of wonder like the blue in the flowers I picked as I walked miles and miles along the trail that led from my cabin to the sea at large at the edge of the world.
Others walked dogs and carried little plastic bags in which to scoop and contain their feces and deposit into occasional containers.
But my flowers turned their faces towards the sky in fond remembrance of the vitality that always streamed through our beings, like the sign did now. Until it was gone.