MEASURES
Word Count: 212
There is nothing that goes by me unnoticed. It’s the details, the pinpricks that can be seen by the blind, the footprints of the ants that have gone about their daily work, that’s where life fully resides. Where it is given its complete attention and care.
One time, when I was young and open to all that was new, all that had grown to become new before it fell into history, I was in love. Stones cracked into sand in my fingers. Drops of rain became rivers that laughed on their way to the oceans. Trees blossomed and stretched to the sky, wiping off blue into smudged clouds. The sun shone from the center of a child’s eye, the moon in the opaque eye of the elderly.
Then I lost love and its undiscerning gaze. Now I am at odds with nature, the air strangles me. The world full of flowers has shrunk to its petals and then, one single petal in particular. It is too large a world to cope with unless once dissects it, seeks the point of focus, microscopes it into a simple cell.
So I tread carefully, my step light and considered. Each day passes that way, with one petal fading into another. One footprint, of an ant.
The details are great here. The explanations and details of youth and age bring the concept to life. Love and it’s exaggerations call on some nostalgic element that the reader can see and feel.
Thank you
Jonathan Blais
Was in one of them there “poetic” moods, where all the years gather together. Thanks, Jonathan!
It has a wonderful meditative quality. A patience. Favorite stuff: “The sun shone from the center of a child’s eye, the moon in the opaque eye of the elderly.”
Thanks, Steve. Tried to get away from the double use of “eye” but haven’t thought of another way of putting it yet
exquisitely philosophical & deeply connected. especially love that last paragraph. landing on a patch the size of ant’s footprint…
Oh thank you, Marcus! Sometimes you just write, you know?