approach

Tonight was the first night of autumn’s approach. Cool, windy, with wild golden light strobing across the smoky blue of Sharptop and the mountains around it. A rainbow, faint and tall, showed up over to my left as I drove past the Piggly Wiggly and across the train tracks. I went into town, parked my truck on Refuge Road, and walked into the fading light, towards the park and the haunted little pond with the one tree in it. As I walked I realized how hidden I’d let my vision become. I’d stepped away from the expansiveness of spirit with which I’ve always looked at this town, the sleepy little town my mother grew up in, the town I relocated to at thirty. I walked into the park. The tractor show is tomorrow so some men and their families were camping there with their RV’s, their folding camp chairs, and their ancient rusty John Deeres. I waved at the people I walked past and went up past the old county post office, which has been resettled in the middle of the park, and then down to the pond with the single tree. D. and I used to walk here. Of course I walked here before that too but this place has the silent singular energy he can carry. The tree had been pruned or cut but was still there in the middle of the little pond. The water was low and layered with algae. It was getting dark so I couldn’t tell what colors the algae held but I found myself glad that I wondered what they were. I walked through the woods up past the pond towards the firehouse and its big old barn and antique fire engines. I didn’t hang out there but turned and came back to the park and then up into town. This town is almost never in any kind of hurry, but there was a lonesome rush to the wind as I walked past the old county jail and the fountain that I jumped into one Fourth of July a couple of years ago. I had had on shorts and a bathing suit and no one seemed to mind. People waved nonchalantly to me. It was just getting dark then too. A little boy joined me after asking his daddy if he could. The water wasn’t deep. It felt good. I stood under the part of the fountain that brought water down from above and tried to coax D. into the fountain with me. He would have none of it, which surprised me. Remembering that night this evening I felt light and happy, strong and full of the quiet peace this past year's transformation has brought. Nothing is missing. The light is perfect as it changes.

©Laura Sorrells 2012

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