Lost to Lichen

It was winter cold but I couldn't feel it, not really. I was part of something deeper, emotionally untouched by the January winds. My eyes were in a pixie cup that I had spotted on a hummock, they were much smaller than I had imagined as is usually the way of things, my mind has a tendency to indulge me. The thawing ice peeked through the tiny landscape creating the suggestion of a reflective surface, perhaps a rock but reminiscent of a breaching whales back, the barnacles becoming lichen the sea a bog. The lichen was dusted in an extra-terrestrial green like that of a muted phosphorescent energy yet to me it still glowed. It was surrounded by more crudely shaped mosses, a strange architecture, like goblets laid down by drink weary mice many moons ago. The stems were twisted, reaching for its open cup that gave up its growth to bloom like that of saturated watercolour.

I want to do everything and all at once. I want to see it, listen to it, smell it. I want to be with it everyday to watch it grow to see how it looks at first light. The world dismantles around me, it is like watching a longed for lovers lips in conversation from across the room, so much potential yet so unobtainable. My knee squashes into the secretly sodden ground as I get as close as I can with my magnifier. I am bewitched by one particular cup that looks as if it has gold flecks deep within its funnel. I look away and look back just to be sure but it is still there, a nest of faintest treasure, I am not imagining it. I am no scientist and I am sure it is something chemical but to me it is magical.  I look up to tell my husband and he quietly tells me I have tears in my eyes, he doesn't ask me what is wrong he knows I am crying because it is all so entirely right and he walks away so I am gifted a moment I don't have to share. I feel like my heart has been spun out of my body, the thinnest of gossamer threads stretching out and meeting with everything through a x20 lens. one of my threads is caught and spins me up to a buzzard calling from way above 'Peeeeewwww' he says 'Peeeeewwww'.