75: Quality

I stand alone on a slope of green— grass with wildflowers, oak trees coarse bushes and clumps of shiny poisen oak— and below me a green dell falls and rises folded under massive hills that roll into cumulus and patches of blue. No other person disturbs my view; no alien color, no discordant sound, just a footpath through the grass that meets a broken-down fence on the next rise. Sunlight shines from buttercups, purple vetch, lupine, blue-eyed grass; a mockingbird calls from out of sight; a cool breeze blows through my hair. Beyond the hill and all around on paved and gravelled paths, joggers hurry uncomfortably gasping about the quality of an estrogen proscription, complaining about work or friends. Whether socks are wet or toes are blistered, whether calf muscles are cramped, whether noses are full of mucus, if we ignore the landscape, the landscape and the smallest part of it, may every leaf and every blade of grass cut us to the heart. Yet only those who see it can suffer from its beauty.