This is the Place Where the Earth Was Breathing

Saturday.  5:17 a.m.

Mark is downstairs, eating a bowl of Cheerios before going to work.  I know this because this is what he does every work-day morning at this time.

It's not him I'm hearing, though.  No, I am roused by something else.  Something lower.  A rhythmic, older sound just outside my window.

I shuffle the sheets and turn towards the window, straining to hear it.   Too airy for a screech owl.  Too quiet for sirens.  It continues, even after Mark pulls the car out of the drive.

Eventually, I get out of bed and crouch near the opened window, waiting intently.  And that's when it strikes me.

Breath.  What I'm hearing is breathing.

The realization confounds me, so I grab a pair of shorts and head outside to look into things.  Finn joins me, his ears standing at alert, which offers me little comfort.

Bare feet on cool patio, I turn my eyes upward, taking in the last quiet moments of a night sky, tracing my fingers along Casseopeia's letter-like edges.  I know this is nothing more than a delay tactic, but I stand there just the same.

I feel unsettled by the task.

As I walk down the drive,  two competing thoughts name the source of the sound and I wonder what I'll find when I reach the space between two houses--a slumbering man or . . . nothing at all.  It is this second prediction that makes me think I'm not fully awake just yet.

I mean, how on earth could the earth actually be breathing?! 

Sure enough, there is no man laying crumpled upon the dewy, uncut grass.  Just the grass and the shrubs and the fence line, wrapped up in cricket song and earthy exhalations.  I stand in wonder, half expecting to see the ground lurch upward.

Eventually, I head inside, for raspberry preserves on English muffin, before going to the park, where a bushful of monarchs flits from flower to flower, as though it were just another day ending in 'y.'