Under the Same Sky
© 2008, Amy Mulvin
The night air is warm with the only remnants the sun had left behind; its warmth still escaping from the earth. The breeze sweeps across, ever so gently, to cool the slight humidity on my skin. The world around me is quiet. I strain my ears to hear. Anything. A four wheeler trailing down the railroad bed. A deer stirring in the woods. Nothing. The orchestra of bugs, and frogs, and peepers fills the background with the most subtle of sounds. Their music, I can only find when my ears have nothing of this busy world left to hear. It is comforting to me. I smile at nothing as I am by myself in this almost other dimension. I suck in the stained breath from my cigarette. Inhale. Hold. Exhale.
My eyes strain to see what’s around me, but it is nothing but darkness. It envelopes me in its mix of heat and dark, and I find myself at peace. My soul is quiet. My heart is beating in tune to the crickets. Nature and I are as one in this brief moment of time and space. The only beauty my eyes can focus on is in the heavens: the specks of light splattered across the deepest blue canvas. They pull me into their mesmerizing flickers.
And nature’s orchestra plays on.
As I stare, hypnotized into this spectacular abyss, it feels to me that for a split second, everything is ok in the world. That for this half a second, we as a world are all at one; at peace; even if for but a fleeting moment. And it occurs to me to wonder, just who else might be staring into this exact same unknown beauty, at this exact same pause in the frame of time, and feeling this same brief moment of peace within… and wondering…
