At the beach or the park it is appropriate to lie on the ground.
To sit still and do nothing but absorb the cries of gulls or the hum of an airplane or other distant sounds and smells and sensations.
But you can absorb those things standing up, and here on the ground
there is a world you can only explore if you put your eye up next to it.
At the beach it is not uncommon, when aimlessly watching people, to espy someone
(a child more often than not)
running their fingers through the sand,
transfixed in the singular feel of it and-if they are looking-
its infinite aesthetic.
Each grain is a world anew and you would not know it unless you
put your face right up to the ground and looked.
At the park it's much the same.
Two-inch fields of grass give away to dirt plateaus,
and it turns out there are a thousand little scarabs-
black & green & red jewels scurrying in the understory.
Twigs as big as logs lie haphazardly, and there a leaf is
wilting, wilting, wilting
for weeks or forever.
I knew a woman once who did not wait for the beach or the park.
In her observation of the ground she was infinitely delighted.
There was always something new or unexpected just waiting to be found if only the
right mind was there to appreciate it.
Tesoras she called them.
She would hold up a piece of dead grass as if it were a seashell pointing out a fold or dip that created a shadow just… so.
“Tesora”.
Now sometimes when the viscera of my mind have trouble digesting a certain memory
I lie on the floor and stare at the veneer of dust,
a tangle of hair,
or the husk of a stink bug and in my mind I see a leaf
wilting, wilting, wilting.