The Green

My favorite time of the day is precisely when I get home from school. It’s at this time, for only an hour or so, that every blade of grass, and every leaf appears to be illuminated from the inside. Every  annoying gnat becomes a lantern of warm light bobbing and diving in the air. Squirrels are silhouetted against a liquid blue sky, their tails haloed be a lining of yellow light.  

The lazy breeze stirs the glowing leaves of london plane trees, only slightly. The trees are  solid and wise. They watched the neighborhood grow up around them. They saw every nasty divorce and heard each dirty secret. They watched as every newborn baby came home for the first time, and as each lost dog was returned to it’s owner. The trees saw the crazy guy with the red pickup, beat his mom. They watched something, someone, tear a spine from a dead rabbit, leaving it neatly text to the body, hoping everyone would think it was road kill. The trees did not cringe. They heard the shouts of joy coming from 1118 when a soldier surprised his mother with his return. They let the sound pierce through their bark, and to reverberate within their core, where it would remain forever.

They stand proudly in the neat line that they were once planted as seedlings, knowing more about the block then any human ever will. They grew bigger, as the people grew older. They became wiser as the people become more tired. Their smooth bark holds the scars of past lovers, hearts and initials stretched and distorted by time. It is the mark of hopelessly young couples that only the trees remember. They snicker as they watch me waddle to the bus, burdened by the weight of too many bags, too much work. They are not burdened by schedule; they simply ebb and flow from lush to leafless with the seasons.

They have secrets of their own, too. Somewhere beneath the earth, two adjacent trees intertwine their roots in a secret embrace of love. Nobody knows but them, and the earthworms. In times of wind, it streams their leaves, extracting every piece of gossip they’ve been storing. Their voices join into one whisper of sound, dozens of voices merging into hushed pandemonium. They all know that their world, the earth thats always laid beneath their limbs, is the only thing that matters. They do not yearn to see what lies beyond the horizon.

The grass is different. The grass is not strong, and not wise. They are always young, young when they sprout and young when they die. But unlike the trees, they are full of energy. The blades constantly press together and reach towards the sky, like kids at a concert. Swaying and colliding with the tiniest of breezes. The blades know their life will be short, yet exciting. They glow with morning light, warm and green. Using dew drops at as expensive jewelry, they glimmer. They release the scent, of dirt, of water, and of green stains on denim knees. They push through the soft earth screaming to everybody that spring has arrived, but only the kids and the deer care enough to hear them. They shout with glee as a child flops on their back, letting the grass cradle them. They cool his neck, and he doesn’t care that they are itchy, or wet. The grass cringes, however, when they are crushed beneath the hard bottoms of dress shoes, or savagely pierced by the heel of a pump. They are lucky that those shoes tend to avoid grass at all costs. The grass dies without knowing the secrets of the neighborhood, but only knowing the secrets of that one kid that laid upon them.