Still Life in Perpetual Motion

Because I wanted to share this with you:

I walk and walk and walk breathing fast and sharp. The world is one crisp cool leaf-clung wonder spangled red and amber. The wet air fills my lungs with a tangible taste and the gray-blue cloud-dappled sky swallows my fears, lending me its grandeur. How could I hide from a world as large as this? As full of promise and the green living ground that springs back at me under my heels. There is only the earth and the sky and the movement and the music and me, and I know that hope will never be dead, not while the world opens its arms to tell me how little I matter, and how much. And there is water, rippled and creased, holding in it the sky and all its expanse, but deeper still. And where the lily pads gather the moss creeps up soft and a thick slimy cover floats on the dusky surface—there!—behind that rock the frogs hide. The golden brown chips crunch under the toes of my boots and I walk, like a queen, beneath a dark enclosed canopy of stark-stripped twigs woven into an impenetrable archway heralding my approach. It’s quieter here; it could have been a century ago or more, and perhaps it is. My steps echo slower until I reenter the open world and there are people again and I’m heading toward some goal. The sun peeks out for a moment to remind me of its presence and its reflection off the water dazzles my eyes. And then I’m moving, recalling that these boots were not made for walking, with the exquisite ache of each solid step as the hard ground refuses to yield to my worn heels. The air still bites cool, but I feel heat, my own heat, because I am alive, alive, alive—and while that fact is true, and while the mountains wait on the horizon in shady blue silence, and while the fallen leaves dust my loosened hair—I will keep moving forward.