Existence, 3:16

It was one of those perfect spring days. The afternoon air so clear each individual blade of grass in the field sparkled in the warm spring sunlight. The daffodil I was conversing with was gently wagging its yellow head, like a good hunting dog constantly sniffing the air. All the while keeping its eyes on me. Its slender green neck flexing gracefully in the gentle breeze. Such a curious creature, the daffodil, living in a riparian. Existing between soil and air. Its body and legs moving imperceptibly through the soil, gathering food and water while in a constant dance to face the sun.
It explained to me, in clipped, perfunctory sentences that the few of my kind that had passed through this field seemed to move like hummingbirds, passing so rapidly it was most difficult to see them, much less study their behavior.
I was on my back. My face to the sky, the warmth of the sunlight thawing the remaining ice crystals in my soul. Those diminishing crystals grown in the icy winter of my childhood.
Slowly sliding my eyes back to the daffodil, I observed, though I was fascinated by this conversation, it was increasingly difficult to concentrate on it.
Forcing my attention back to the conversation just in time to hear.
“Well, you have nothing to say to that?” Demanded the daffodil peevishly.
I had a momentary flash of what my face must look like. My pupils gone super nova in spite of the bright sun, my blank glassy stare reflecting a mind focused on itself, with no room for external input.
A snort of derision echoed through that mist
“are all of your kind so rude?”
I could see the concussive wave of the daffodils affront ripple across the field toward me. Each concentric ring, shades of purple and green, abrasive as it washed over me.
“Um, could you ask your question again, I was distracted.”
I tried to make it sound like an apology.
Even as the words of the daffodil began again, I could feel my brain following my eyes as they were drawn to the hedgerow surrounding this field. In New England, early settlers had to clear trees and rocks to establish the fields they needed for crops and hay. Trees laboriously felled with an axe, every bit used for lumber or firewood. The rocks, brought to the North American Plateau two million years ago, in the ice age, the Holocene glaciers plowed slowly south. When the climate warmed the glaciers began to recede, leaving immense piles of gravel and rock. Those piles named moraine’s, a beautiful word for these hills of sand and gravel. The winter freeze thaw cycle in the North East pushes the stones to the surface. It is as if rocks are a winter crop. As Yankee ancestors attempted to tame their lands, these rocks, ground smooth and polished by their journey were moved to the edges of the fields. To become, over time the ubiquitous stone walls of New England. Used still as legal boundary lines. My sunny delicious field, my world, perhaps my existence was framed, in this moment, by these walls.
Trees and bushes had grown up along these walls forming hedgerows. The hedgerows, feet of stone, bodies of whorled grey brown bark crowned with glistening green canopy, were familiar and comfortable. What had caught my eye was the realization that all that had morphed into a flat wall of riveted iron plate. Tarnished and rusted. The top of that wall, surrounding the field, followed the outline of the treetops.
A line of hammered rivets, peened in place while still red hot traced the top edge of the silhouette. Two more rows of rivets followed a horizontal line along the bottom edge.
The daffodil was still talking,
I closed my eyes and slowly tumbled back into my mind. Comforted by the realization that my existence and my world are defined only defined by my mind.