Hillside Grass

The wind through hillside grass, yellow-tumbled, changing shape and shadow as though a cloud is passing over them, casting a thin veil of dark-gray light that blends into the purple heads of the wild grasses, and if you watch carefully enough, it appears as though the hill is moving, just pieces of it, carpets of sun-illuminated water, rippling, sweeping, becoming its own trembling organism, speaking in wisps of cricket song and warm soil and the click of lupine seed capsules, the rattle of yarrow and desert parsley, the tiny insects no bigger than grains of ground pepper thrown up like dust each time the wind blows, the great spray of movement rising from the white caps on the river, braided through grass, fed heavy with lantern light, almost transparent in their brightness, the silhouette of the next blade, the next, the next, falling into each other, paper lanterns, each one pulling in different directions and yet somehow unified, like starlings making strange black clouds, or sea kelp forests jostled by unfurling waters, the undersided waves too deep for anything but milky strands of light, the dust reflecting like broken glass, the sky cloudless but shifting.