A Flower, Unnoticed

A Flower Unnoticed
The first drop of sunlight shimmers on a wave—the most perfect chime of the most immaculate bell, ringing out to announce the arrival of a new day. A swell, and the light tiptoes on the water playfully. Then, in one pure moment, the water lives with the daylight, dancing for the new day laid out before it. The light, a siren, arouses the water, enlivens and coaxes it into life.
        Near the shore, in a frayed blue and white folding chair of rusted aluminum, a man sits placidly. He is bearded, and wears a tattered white polo with numerous stains, and jeans whose holes reveal years of use.
        The generous sun rises with grace and ease, giving a kind warmth to the lake. Rises, it ever rises, and now it is fully visible above the trees, gliding frictionless in the heavens.
        The playful wind runs through the trees and tousles the man’s long hair, pinning its strands to his imperturbable face. Air fragrant with the smell of sap and pine hovers near the man as the trees, swayed about by the wind, dispense their scent like a swinging censer. All the lake stretches before him as the open palm of his weathered hand.
        Time sweeps past the man, too, and as hours pass he becomes hungry. Standing up, the man stretches, reaching towards the blue above him. He walks into his cabin and cuts a bruised red apple into eighths. He fills up a dusty glass with water from the antiquated pump outside. He returns to his folding chair, sits, and eats his apples and drinks his water in peace.
        Later in the afternoon, the man abruptly stands up, and removes his clothes. The last vestige of society removed, he takes a walk around the lake to stretch his legs. He walks slowly, with his head held high and his hands behind him, swimming in the beauty surrounding him. Not a sign of civilization sullies his view, for his nakedness reveals no cultured thought or pretense. The tough soles of his feet graze lightly on the topsoil, the harshness of its twigs mitigated by the luxurious verdure of grass and moss. The soft sounds of happy birds trickle down to his ears while gentle giants guard him with enleafed arms, and sunlight pours lazily through to caress the man. Near the path languors a diseased flower, soon to die. The man passes by without noticing it.
        He really isn’t a beautiful man. He has scars and an ugly nose, and too much hair on his back. His eyes belie his intelligence, for they are dull and brown and one is lazy. His body is like Soviet architecture: efficient but ugly. But the nature around him has a pragmatic beauty, and he fits more naturally into the trees and soil and chirping birds than ever did he in a lifeless concrete building.
        When evening comes, it finds him back on his chair, watching the sun sink like a stone in water through the empurpled sky. A whisper of a scent touches his nose, like a noise from afar, softly to his distant ear, flitters, and fades. The broad-shouldered man reaches for his glass of water on the sand beside him as he stares across the small lake at nothing in particular. The sun is setting behind his small wooden lodge, and it casts a dim light on the silent water. He thinks about nothing, really, as his mind drifts from one trivial matter to another. Majestic trees grow near the shore, draping their massive branches over its edge. Slowly as the sun’s dying light makes its soundless exit, a different light replaces it. The stars and moon cast an ethereal shimmer upon the scene, and it entrances its sole human witness.
         As the man sits in his chair near the lake, and night comes, he wonders what his friends back home would say if he didn’t return the next day. He knows they wouldn’t really miss him; he is not very well-liked anymore. He feels like staying at the cabin, where at least the trees and the water and the sun and air are not condescending, they don’t care who he is or what he has done. That he is too weak to confront his wife or his best friend leaves no bitter residue in nature’s simple acceptance of him.
         Again the scent teases the man’s nose, and he becomes intrigued. Grabbing his rifle from where it lies on the sand, he stands up. He hears a faint movement in the trees a hundred meters down the shore. The trail around the water is rough and faint, but the glow of the moon reflects from the water, giving him just enough light. When he stops, he sits down on a partially buried rock. There is a small cut on his leg from a branch, with a drop of blood running down his shin. The scent of his own blood triggers his memory, and he knows what he smelled before. A rustle to his left catches his attention and he turns. A young, sparsely coated fox sits staring warily at a wounded, bleeding rabbit shuddering only paces away. The fox crouches, leaps, and while the rabbit fruitlessly convulses, trying to get away on broken legs, the fox ends the rabbits life in his teeth. Blood drips from the fox’s mouth as a loon calls in the distance like the mourning cry of a funereal trumpet.
        The man stays there for a few minutes. He thinks about his best friend; why his wife would sleep with him, why she would pretend it was all okay. His friends… they won’t miss him. But as he stands up and wades into the lake, and as his thoughts run to tears like sunshine into rain, and as he feels the cold steel against his temple, he finds himself thinking about the rabbit. But the lake engulfs him and washes away his cares like the blood from his head.