I stood at the glass door, watching.
Beyond the stone deck
and the birdhouse
two delicate blue eggs
lay nestled atop carefully arranged
blades of grass.
The field beyond the fence
was bright with spring.
A tree named Walter
lifted its branches into the morning.
Every tree within daily view
should have a name.
A dog bred to bear burdens
wandered lazily through the grass,
distracted by an over-dramatic cardinal
or maybe the way
the breeze had begun to smell like
spring.
The coffee in my mug tasted faintly
of hazelnut and milk.
Scrambled eggs cooled on a plate.
Cologne drifted through the kitchen.
The juice from a red grape
slid down the back of my throat.
The field was busy with singing.
Not birds alone.
Something larger.
Something hidden.
The busyness of living
moved through the grass
like wind moving through
tousled hair
or waves crossing the sea.
At the time,
I thought the field would always be there.
The eggs.
The cardinal.
Walter.
The dog.
The glass door.
The man standing somewhere behind me.
Months later
he disappeared.
Then the seasons continued
one second
one hour
one page
at a time.
Summer crossed the field.
Autumn followed.
Winter bent the grass flat.
One afternoon
I found myself standing
on the opposite side of the same field.
Far beyond the fence.
Far beyond the glass door.
Far beyond the woman
who used to stand in that kitchen
and watch.
The singing was gone.
The grass was gone.
The hill itself
seemed smaller.
Yellow machines moved through the earth
lifting,
turning,
leveling.
Steel teeth entered the ground.
Mud spread where pasture had been.
The field I remembered
was being dismantled
one scoop at a time.
A subdivision would stand there soon.
Roads.
Mailboxes.
Driveways.
Children who would never know
there had once been a field.
I watched for a long time.
Long enough for the machines
to continue their sweaty work.
Long enough to notice that
Walter was still standing.
Long enough to realize
that I was no longer looking
at the same landscape.
Or from the same place.
Or through the same eyes.
The field stretched between
what had happened
and what remained.
I stood,
watching the earth being turned over,
feeling the soil being turned over,
tasting the smoke and smothering
just a little.
"What if I take one step backward?"
I wondered.
"One more,"
I whispered.
Artifacts churned
deep and then deeper
burying and then
buried.
And I drove away
waving to Walter
in the rearview mirror.
— Iris Lennox
The things that slow us down can't be manufactured.
They have to come— arrive— without warning and before or after we're ready.
Today maybe it's a train rattling through your car and the wind it leaves behind picking up the ends of your hair and pulling you back into something some time when a train was in the distance— was it home, or something like it? When the whistle of the train—
Or a phone call where the C-word is uttered and everyone in the room collapses, but underneath. On the inside. The push and the pull of, "But wait. Just one second ago life was about this or that and now this." Or
a man catches your eye down the hall, a woman laughs with a crinkle in her nose— had it been there before? Maybe only today and then a series of wonderings when wandering is no place to stay, or
sitting on a rock in the desert not asking questions and questions begin to ask themselves in the form of prayers you couldn't hear during this morning's coffee.
When does a prayer begin and when does it end?
Where was I when I was the one who took the breath inward to address God on an exhale and why am I still breathing in one elongated breath since— when?— Was I seven? Or forty-three?
And who was I when I thought or felt or began "Dear Lord . . ."?
What is movement but our footsteps being heavier than air but lighter than we expected because the weight of now never lands until we look back.
Today I looked up into the trees in a place I know well and I saw the sunlight weave itself through every leaf and all the way down, just as it has before and there was a moment when all I could do was forget where I was forget what I was thinking and maybe I breathed but who is to say
You might as well befriend the moon— embrace her clouded peekaboos. And music…
Receive the tune— no time to choose— alone in a crowd or no one in view. And a smell…
Wafts past your nose— what was that? Or who?
Perfume on skin or a place that you knew.
Pause.
No need to wonder— you know who that was— and who you are as nostalgia winds the second hand round.
“Time is a straight line,” said he. “It moves consecutively, watches as it goes behind and below, like walking a path that winds into— well— no one knows.”
“No one knows, that’s right,” said she. “Simply put, I do agree. But there’s no line to speak of. Time bends—not like a knee— more like a finger touching its thumb or a rainbow finding its spherical end and answering with a gentle, Come.”
Time returns to the places we’ve been.
One says, “That memory is far.” Another, “The moment is here.”
Yesterday can be set down, but the nows of that day rise from the ground without notice or sound—
to delight or confound— it depends on the seconds into which they were bound.
Moments become recollections. Recollections, seeds with a life of their own.
Promises and hope, gentleness and rage, a touch, a glance, a well-appointed room or a half-written page—
all sown into skin, finding rest in smiles and tears, repose and toil, love and loss, freedom and cost, and the way sunlight lay across the earth at the end or when it all began.
“That was back then,” said he. “That is today,” said she.
The minutes listened.
“There is wisdom in both.”
Time smiled— crouched, quiet— behind an autumn tree, waiting for the final leaf to fall.
Iris Lennox 