210429 Microcosm

 Apr. 29

Forest: Tree

House, River, Dollhouse, Brook.

The ridge stream where green life is emerging from the pale winter leaves. The tiny waterway tumbles headlong down and down the ridge, in perfect imitation of a great rushing river with waterfalls, pools and deltas.

 A miniature delta forms as the stream merges with the pond.

Where the water pools, a clump of trees becomes almost an island.

In the microcosmic garden of a mossy rock green life abounds.

Everywhere things are growing, greening.

This violet, barely the size of my wedding ring, wastes no time growing big or tall, just tiny leaves, tiny flowers, perfect and delicate. 

A small world unto itself where the tree is a universe..

Moss grows on everything, like the vegetation of Venus in the Bradbury story, rainforest-proliferate.

"He did not sleep...

Things grew on him in layers...the small growths of the forest took root in his clothing. He felt the ivy cling and make a second garment over him; he felt the small flowers bud and open and petal way ... he could see the other two men outlined, like logs that had fallen and taken upon themselves velvet coverings of grass and flowers." *

I think of this story whenever I see how the moss and lichens encroach upon every stone and tree.

*****

I am enchanted: I walk over to the ridge and the stream each day to see the next blind green fronds poking out of last year's snow-bleached grasses.

*****

It is raining this morning. I rose just before dawn and the world was gone. When it snows your eye understands it is only that snow is obscuring the southern mountains, but with the drizzling rain invisible, the illusion is disconcerting.

I must go and see the river.

Mumma Yaga

* Ray Bradbury, "The Long Rain", from The Illustrated Man, 1952