Grass And Stone

These hills have bones. The rotted stumps of stonework still stand against the wind. Grass, seas of grass, long and waving, bright and muted, endless grass. It washes around the base of dead towers, towers that rise coldly into the warm daylight. The sun and the rain feeds the grass, and the grass keeps growing, but nothing feeds the stones. Not anymore.

They used to grow. I would walk the hills and where there had been no stones, stones would be. I have not traveled as far. I walk less now. But when I get to these hills I remember them before the stones arose. They were bare and clean, clothed with only the swaying, dancing grass.

I have come here now, at the end, to pass on. There is a hill that never saw a stone. A single tree stood at the top of this hill, guarding against the growth of the stones. Towers and walls and houses grew, lichen like, across this hilly country, but never here.

I am almost at the top. I am tired. The walking has worn me out. The grass brushes against my legs and my fingertips. It smells like a mountain spring. There will be rain tonight. For now, the sun is out, far away but somehow warming still. I am halfway. I am more than halfway. The grass ushers me forward with a gentleness I had forgotten.

I rest my hand on the trunk of the tree; it’s warm from the daylight now. Even the light looks warm. The sun is dipping close to the mountains far away, and it starts to look almost red. I sit down against the trunk. The grass dances softly, beside me, on the next hill, and the next, all the way to the mountains’ bright edge.