Seed

In the forest in late spring, on the flood plain along the river languid running, a backwater from the main channel, blanketed with a blizzard of cotton seeds that shown as crystals in the shafts of sunrise.  The seeds skated like water skippers on the temporary pond.

Along the main channel of the river, the seeds would fall, the gradual descent of hot air balloons.  Slow, oh so slow, and then their parachutes hit the river and they sped up in its current.  Some to travel until the great sea.  Others landed on the shore, germinating where they’d land.

And I, a homebody who envied the eternal drift of the seabound until I’d decided to alight from family and the home of my birth to drift myself.  Then, to envy those planted firm where they’d fallen from the towering tree of their grandmother.

And some seeds netted in the silk of caterpillars descending from the trees, to be mired there forever, it seemed.

And when I am mired, it seems a forever.

But the seeds never last that long.

© 2015 by Michael C. Just