A Morning of Folded Wings
Sitting on the rock, the moss met my palm with a coolness. It was the temperature of a night's held moisture seeping into a shirt sleeve. Beside me a butterfly sits still, wings folded. So light I can't tell if it's breathing. The smell of old trees sweating lies over everything, and a wind that hasn't yet come seems to have brought the whole forest to a halt. I didn't have to get up. Just sitting like that, waiting to see why the moment the folded wings first opened wouldn't come, that was the morning.
Walking a forest path, I once sat on an old bench, and dew that had seeped into the grain of the wood wet my collar. For some reason I lingered there much longer that day. Time that didn't move felt, if anything, whole. I suppose I too was sitting there waiting for something that had been folded away.
When I lowered my head, a drop of dew gathered on my collar fell and left a small dot on the rock. Before the dot could dry, a butterfly opened its wings once and closed them.
Watching the butterfly, I noticed a fern sprung from the crack in the rock beside it, still folded, not yet having shaken off its wet. It so resembled the butterfly's folded wings that I looked from one to the other for a long while.
I learned right there that a fern takes longer to unfurl than a butterfly. Between the folded fronds, still-wet light was seeping out.
I went quietly down to the water and the pebbles shifted underfoot. The water passed on its way without noticing the butterfly, and behind it small bubbles rose and vanished.
I lingered a moment where the foam had vanished, then walked back down to the water. Did the sound of pebbles knocking underfoot ride the morning air all the way to the rock where the butterfly sat? The moss on that rock still held its coolness.