t's first one step then another listening as I walk first left then right left ear right ear left ear hears the sound then right ear hears the sound bouncing back and forth and I'm walking walking one step then another.
Catching me with tendrils invisible the tiny molecules of odor fill the air and smell makes me wonder that I don't see them how small they must be and I smell the fields and the dung they have just spread all over the field over there beyond the dike over there beyond the copse of juniper over there and still they catch me cow dung and horse dung but mainly cow dung that's what I think and all these molecules how small they must be is it true that one molecule of Plutonium in a million of air molecules can kill you I don't think so but they sure are small.
And smaller still the sounds everywhere the sounds I look and I look and I look but I still don't see the sounds and they come in the shape of a bird a bee and the geese returning and the applause of millions of leaves from the grove to my right green shimmerings like a school of little green fish in the air resting for a while on the trunks and branches and their susurrus grows again to applause that is so small I cannot see.
And it's one step and then another and I hear each foot as it reaches the dirt underfoot and crackle just so under my left foot and just so (a little bit differently) under my right foot and again I cannot see the sounds but they do exist I am sure of that.
It's blue blue overhead and green green all around and I don't have a care I don't think so with two feet to guide me and this wonderful springtime still a splattering of snow on the north side of the grove could it be no I was mistaken it's not snow it's something else and how could I have thought snow it's May after all nearly June.
And I think of her hair as I walk with two feet of her long black hair as black and heavy as the night in my face and that smell that dark and forbidden smell of her hair nothing small about that smell but it was dark though the light turned down low and she laughed and said what are you doing burying yourself in my hair are you eating my hair and I said no not really but I would like to she said you're crazy or said nothing at all I don't remember and tousled mine and I drank hers fill after fill and she filled me with night and many many nights and thoughts of Baudelaire and Persia.
And the air molecules too are very small I feel them on my skin on my face on my eyelids in my hair against my thighs but most of all on my face the fresh space that touches and touches and touches everything and I move through the sky that reaches all the way to the ground and it's blue here too if you really look for example over at the mountains over there that's air molecules from what I hear that color things distantly blue and the forest on the side of that mountain is dark with just a shade of blue if you really look and now I know that I see air and that's why the sky is blue.
And here she comes again not in real life but in my thoughts and I think of her a lot she pushes air and smell aside and comes and puts her arms around me and kisses me right smack on my lips and I blush and get a small erection it should be the other way around that's how it happened and she giggles and then she's gone and we my erection and I are left with the memory of this memory and air and smell return and I laugh for life is just wonderful.
Taste is another small thing small things but taste is not really what you taste it's really smell for taste buds can only tell sweet sour salt and bitter apart from what I hear and the rest of it all that good food and her delicious tongue which gives me another erection is really smell from the top of your mouth and not taste at all but it's so warm and she moves it around when she kisses me and she reminds me of my cat very content.
I have begun to melt now it's very strange and I didn't notice it at first just noticed that my feet didn't make their sounds any more when they struck the dirt no crackle at all and after a while of this little silence in this big sound all around me I looked down and I no longer had feet they had become the dirt on the road and little pieces of grass that has sprouted in the middle between the tracks from the tractors and cars that come this way sometimes but not often at least not the cars and they no longer made their sound.
My legs are still moving though and I'm moving forward but I'm shorter hey that's for sure a lot shorter now and really I've melted all the way up to my knees and flowing into the road I had better get out into the field if this melting is going to go on for I don't want to become a road for the rest of my life no sir having cars and tractors drive all over me no I would much rather be a field so I head into the field getting shorter all the time and I'm moving forward still and under the electric wire fence it's not really a strong current just enough to remind the cows and they need reminding too they're quite dumb but nice who's the boss and to keep them from running away or into the road and get run over and killed and I'm still melting didn't even have to crouch one bit to get under the wire which I haven't been able to do since I was a kid and just so tall.
And everything but my chest and neck and head has melted now but I'm still moving forward although I don't know how that could be possible what with my legs gone and oh yes I also have some arm left on each side and I can move them too but my hands are gone.
And then it's just my neck and head and everything looks strange from this angle but very green the grass coming up and fighting for air and sunlight and then my mouth is gone and I can taste the earth and then my nose is gone and I can smell the earth and then my ears are gone and I can hear the earth the grass the tiny roots and how they work and talk to each other saying quit pushing and a million million voices of the earth and then my eyes are gone and I see the earth only my hair left for the air to tousle and then the earth has my hair too and I grow and I feel the dike gurgling on my left shoulder and the applause on my right and the slow slow but really quite fast spinning and I move and move and move with all that's upon me and there's a larger circle and I race with all the life upon me around and around the brilliant light and we all move in many directions and I am the mother and harbor of things that are and I think of her just briefly and wonder what she'll think when she finds out I've melted into the earth.
Rowan Wolf was born and raised in northern Sweden. He was a part-time journalist while in school and had some stories published at that time. He left Sweden in 1969 for Africa, then went to England and finally arrived in the United States in 1979. He is a singer/songwriter as well as a writer and currently resides in the Los Angeles area.
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