Lyndsey Covert Blog Post #1

      There are sunglasses hooked on my shirt and I leave them there so the light might sting my eyes a bit. I see the clover’s stocky leaves turn from the gossip of a frolicking wind. The blades of grass cannot resist but listen, responding shock and awe to the sharp angles of buildings as soon as they tilt their heads back. They left a stump, a tree not good enough to make the proverbial cut, instead making the literal one. My eyes, squinting beneath the cloudless rays, reconstruct a tree with branches named Grace, a tree with all the slender movement of a dancer. I see no reason to understand how the grass might grasp my calves, had trampling feet like mine not left it to petty words exchanged with fickle winds. That being said, they are not so easily convinced as the golden strands of me, spun like Rumpelstiltskin’s prize; sometimes it feels like I was coerced into existence, when the worms squirming beneath need nothing more than to be. My mind is empty besides the secrets shared between leaves of trees more worthy than my stump, trees that feel the Earth more completely than I could in bare feet with my toes burrowed into sand. I bow to trees with trunks like awkward ankles, knobs knocking together in a rhythm only imagined, never heard. In the distance the students move, ants on scent trails with mindless, restless thumbs; gossiping wind whisks us away same as the tittering grass. I want to stay grounded but even the ground walks these days. Buried steam carries me from presence into precedence, always fitting “most important” into boxes and stacking them. I’d chose a still moment and grass tickling my shins over destination. At least I’d like to think I would. I love the bark that leaves my eager hands rubbed raw, all because I wanted a better view of nothing in particular. Still, I’d sit and listen to the slander of the wind at that altitude because who am I to say what is true?