leap of faith

The sun has pushed through the clouds, which have fled, like squirrels disrupted, away from the sudden, surprising renewal of fierce and focused heat. The shadows that lay spread across the field's wide expanse crouch now, crowded and cowering, in the corner. Color bleeds slowly back into the ground; texture and definition now make clear what the dark had muddled. Man arises from his slumber; morning has come -- if not literally, then figuratively, and it means just the same. He looks up, blinks and squints. He stretches out, feeling life spring forth through his limbs. The breakthrough of light through dark, the triumph of sharp white rays over clustered gray molecules hits him like coffee, but without the caffeine drop.

His eyes take a second to adjust, the little lenses both natural and man-made shifting in and out of focus, gears adjusting to fine-tune sight. The smell of nature, unlike the stale scent of office, unlike the perfumes and fast-food fumes of mall, unlike the homely smell of the house, fills and expands through his lungs and strikes his blood like a cold hammer, sending off frigid sparks of excitement through his veins. The warmth bathes his skin and the breeze whips his shirt and pants about his bare skin. Hot and cold, nowhere in the middle, just extremes, driving forth a body that hopes this time to keep up with the mind. His legs long to run, to sprint, through the grass, a part of nature and a piece of the world at last.

He has awoken.