The Breath of God

With the touch of the back of a mother’s hand against an infant’s face, the breeze gently caressed a landscape with a beauty usually captured only on postcards. Tall prairie grass swayed delicately in time with an unheard tune. Leaves in maple trees ever so slightly turning color rustled and gripped more tightly to their branches, determined that this would decidedly not be the day on which they fell. The weakest among them did fall, and as they did they were carried along the ground, tumbling toward the impatient gurgling creek. Having reached it, they rode toward an unknown destination, unknown even to the creek, which made its impatience all the more irrational.

A light gust kicked up the fluffy tail of a grey squirrel scurrying frantically about. This wasn’t his first autumn, and he wasn’t fooled. These glorious days were only a tease. The countdown to a bitter winter was on. He pranced about gathering nuts, storing them in furrows and holes where only he would find them in the dark grey of January.

The light current carried a black crow in circles over a massive ancient oak, as she contemplated a perch then alighted upon it. She surveyed the valley, intimately familiar with terrain, alert for anything out of place. Invisible to her at the base of the trunk of the mighty tree was a sobbing young girl, wisps of her long hair swaying in the quiet breath of God, which tried persistently to comfort her and dry her tears.