ob.ii

you pause atop a springy patch of moss; you don’t know
the moss is nearly 60cms thick, that it binds itself together to hold your
weight so you don’t fall through amongst the roots it adheres to. you stand
still and turn your face to the clouded sky that peeks at you between the tips
of the evergreens, but you can barely make out the sky between the dapples of
water that mar your lenses. you pull your frames from your face with one hand,
grabbing the bottom of your shirt with your other. your hands come together,
and you soak/rub the rain from your lenses into the bottom of your navy blue nylon/cotton
blend. you put the glasses back on your nose and, still suspended by the moss
beneath your feet, you look around the woods and miss the lynx, frozen,
watching you on a bed of fallen leaves beneath a bower of fallen branches. the
lynx watches you. you don’t even know the lynx is there. and your hiking booted
feet step off your moss web and pound over fallen foliage with abandon,
stepping ever so close to the refuge of the lynx, who coils its muscles in
preparation for a spring as you pass. but no spring is necessary for the lynx.
you pass. you are on your way.