Insignificant

Pin It Speaking of the unseen appendages of scuttling mice, the speed of thought and all things invisible to my naked myopic eyes, I make an addendum.

I live in the seasons of the northern Northwest, the rain, the mist, the fog. In 55 years of living I have not yet observed for myself every variety of plant proffered me on the 40 acres of 10-minute soil I inhabit. I have tried, oh, I have tried to notice. Today a roadside sapling caught my attention. A yearling of a tree, spindly, aspen-like, it's leaves sporadically trembled here and there with unseen drops of water.

I crouched beneath the shivering tree, plastic caped and hooded, until I cramped trying with unblinking intensity to see a single raindrop before it struck the leaf. I could not detect the invisible force try as I would. Only the evidence of the sudden tremble of the leaf could I see. The single drop of water eluded me until it struck a surface. That was the only "sight" I was allowed, that delicate shiver.

I remembered hearing of a British woman blinded at a young age from some nameless childhood disease. Sight was returned to her years later as a result of an inovative surgery. Nevertheless, though seeing now, she had left one simple frustration. She could never see a single drop of water. Hours at a time she would spend fiddling with her kitchen faucet cutting a full stream of water down, down, until it was a trickle and then a series of single sporadic drips. At that point, no matter how fiercely she focused, the water would disappear for her. Each time she was left sightless to the single drop.

I examine a life, insignificant in it's span, the blink of an eye, commonest of the common in it's ability to blink that eye and yet, perhaps at the completion of this monumental task, this labor of Thor we call life, a single drop will slow enough to define itself against that mighty stream of consciousness. Perhaps not.