Self-portrait with details
I don’t know how long I hunkered beside a shrubby big-leaf maple on that mosquito-ridden slope before I noticed. An hour, perhaps, spent stewing misnomered emotions to a pulp, cogs turning uselessly against the same patient air.
And then by unexpected grace — or perhaps the intervention of a nearby tan oak, fed up with my annoying vibes — I blinked and bits of the world that were not me came into focus: the greenest of greens in the maple’s arms, the sequence of white along the edges of a butterfly’s wings, and, eventually, myself painted in perfect photo-realism, on the ground beside my knee