Swept clean The matted earth does not resemble anything, smelling as it does of damp depths, of tombs, of flowers. I breathe in its scent and the boundary between me and the unmoving dirt dissolves. Somewhere far away birds call, grow weaker, And vanish, like the faces of old women who lay mute beneath, descending into silence like pebbles vanish from the surface of a lake into a different world, in which we are blind. The sun pierces the copse of wild vines and Sparks against leaves like diamonds, flashing in the deep hollows of roots, catching the fiery globes of pumpkins and shaking gold fans, that flutter in uninterrupted splendor and cover the world in foliage until it loses all sense Of reality. Until, finally, I belong to the same family as the birds and trees, knowing just when the sun sets, where the dew hangs heaviest as night falls, and am content to walk a little longer across her girth, who holds me up.
Linda Copman is a lifelong lover of words and their power to help her connect to the world and to the other beings that dwell there.
Grand Little Things 