Night Flights

Night Flights

The smell of dew laden pine needles and loamy earth
enter my nose as I breathe in the morning.
I hear the Sun send its exploratory beams through the trees
It turns the sky rose pink, waking the birds
to sing their greeting songs to the day.

Dew drops hang on a spider web like crystals on a chandelier.
The Spider prepares for its breakfast then repairs the damage
done in the carnage of the night's feasting.

I awake, wonder how I got to this place and why I am here.
I have no memory of what led me to sleep in the woods.
It is a familiar place where I come often on my walks to get away.
A large boulder makes a perfect chair.
I sit, lean back and watch the clouds and sky
through the holes between the treetops and leaves.

I walk down the familiar path past the old dead tree with the root ball
forming a hump beside the trail. The dirt has eroded away leaving
mostly rocks and roots and other small plants that have taken root among
the remains of the old tree.

I cross the creek and come finally to the edge of the forest where the pasture
that leads to our house begins.
But, something is wrong.
Nothing looks familiar any more.

Our house is not there. The orchard is also gone.
There are buildings. Many of them. Strange buildings
That do not look like normal houses.
I must have been gone a lot longer than I thought.

It seems I have come upon the same place as before but
At a different time or dimension.

Even the strange dwellings and people have a certain familiarity to them.
The buildings look more like they are from the future than the past
because I have seen old architecture and this is like nothing I have seen before.

I am suddenly and startlingly confronted with the figure of someone else.
Immediately in front of me and coming toward me.
He evidently did not see me.
I looked at him but he just looked through me.

That odd familiarity came tingling up my spine.
Who or what is this being?
Why can't he see me?
I then realize that the figure I just encountered was myself.

Another me from another time and space.
I decided to follow him into the woods.
He walked the same familiar path that I had walked so many times before.
He came to the sitting rock that the trail passes on it's way further up the hill.

He did not sit. He just came to a stop in the trail.
He reached out and opened a door.
A door in the woods!
A door that you could not even see!

He stepped through it and closed it behind him.
I tried hurriedly to find the door and follow him through
but there was no door there.
I waited for what seemed like an Eternity.
It may have been an Eternity the way time worked in this crazy place.

Another door opened and the other me stepped out and headed home.
I saw no point in following him any more. I needed to find my way back
to my time and place in the Universe.

I walked over to the sitting stone, sat down and pondered
on how I would get home.
Suddenly I felt a strange sensation.
I realized that I was melting or merging with the rock.

I watched as my body disappeared into the rock.
I could still see and hear but I could not speak or move.
At that point I just sat and watched the seasons change like channel surfing
on a TV set. Time speeded up tremendously.
I watched everything around me change. I watched whole civilizations
come and go. Strange and exotic creatures appeared and disappeared.

The Earth seemed to be spinning like a top.
I watched the stars streak past in the sky as if they were all shooting stars.
Then everything started slowing down.
It got slower and slower until I was able to see the door again.

It opened into an entirely new and different Universe.
All things were changed.
There was peace for the first time since the Garden.
The only thing that was missing from Paradise was

...Man.

© 2011 Philip G. DeLoach