I am 10
and it is Spring
and the highway flashes by,
with my head pressed against the cool glass,
waiting out the interminable,
always for a child, interminable, car ride
to visit Aunt Dot.
The air conditioning blowing from the side vents of the car
is so bitingly cold and fresh,
I amuse myself by blowing my hot, impatient breath against the glass
and drawing smiley faces in the quickly dissipating fog.
Through that disappearing mist, colors begin to flash
among the green along the highway:
blues, whites, reds, and yellows.
It's as though the undulating pastures have been painted
in large, beautiful swathes of bluebonnets and Indian paintbrushes
just to entertain me.
I do not know yet that my eyesight is fading.
I do not realize that I am learning to see the world
through impressionist eyes, as fuzzy, intermingled, unsharpened colors.
I cannot see the individual flowers,
only the large incoherent shapes they make amid the green.
It is still breath-taking.
I am 20,
now double the life lived
from that first memory of bluebonnet fields.
I lounge among them, careful to find a spot of only green
in between patches of blue,
careful to avoid the mounds of fire ants,
lying in wait for any disturbance.
It is hot, and the grass is itchy.
But the flowers are so beautiful, crisp, individual.
I can see clearly now, or so I think.
Life lies ahead, certain and sure,
in the way it only can for someone who is 20.
I am 40 now, or still close enough, now double the life lived
from that sun-bathed day in Spring.
I do not lounge among the bluebonnets,
nor do I see them quite so clearly,
except in memory,
where they will always remain,
like life,
a beautiful, fleeting impression.
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