| Echo 51
He came like a breath of the wind upon a day clouded in a sultry heat whose mists were a burden for the lungs and a day shrouded in vapors which hid the hope of a weighted sun. I had no idea he was there, but for the rustle of the wind in the leaves as they began to chatter a tale of the epic of him. His words were like the whisper of the trees and the fog of the day seemed to break upon them as the sun began to shine through revealing a blue sky above. He inquired of my guest house in how if it were for rent......and for some reason in which I had never considered....I simply rented it to him. His name was Dan Sherman, but what are names when one is invisible like the wind in being only heard and felt. The mystery of him belied the meekness of him........he undertook a garden where none had been before....and it seemed to blossom in a day. Then there was the fountain.....which bubbled with joy as if from the depths of the earth running in lines like a verse of poetry....written in a language only for God's eyes up above. I asked him why the garden seemed to be of prose....and how it all seemed to speak when one strolled through it.....like it was calling to someone it knew.....like it was prepared for someone....like it was from a dream time of shadows which had long slept and desired now to be awoke by the kiss of only......if what it felt could be the starflake of a vision as the celestial sphere showered upon it a divine Light....beyond the beams of the moon caught in rainbow prism halos of the night. He only smiled and in a look dared me to discover his visage in the works which he composed. He never locked his doors....or my doors to the cottage house...it was his desire for me to come unto him to see what his work was.....but when asked his only reply was of his work, "I am a simple gardener". I begged to differ, but when one is mesmerized by the enigma of a gardener....who seemed more librarian in his books.......whose drawings were of artistic geometry whose sweeping lines created such patterns they seemed vista and not math........and whose gaze was forever filled with the expectation of as if someone was coming......one just pondered in his explanation that a gardener was enough. In moments......... from the east, the sound of my voice drifted unto me again with a softness which was tuned to an even more perplexing tone than mine in repeating in echo, "What is this?" Dan only smiled and with outstretched arms presented the garden to the voice....and then bowed himself to the earth. I do not remember how I got back into my bed.....but I awoke to the morning feeling almost as if my mind had been intoxicated by a nectar only the gods had ever tasted. I found Dan......and almost did not inquire of him as I felt foolish in wonder of questioning if it had all been a dream...and he might think me mad. But I did ask.....and his only reply was, "She came." He was busy the day creating what his plans stated were a field of dreams. It seemed strange to me that dreams would be constructed with compass and line....but he was exact in his measure and his purpose seemed even more intense now....as a man who knew he only had one opportunity to impress and this was it.I started to call him Noah as he was forever building what seemed an imaginary ship....or something which was there, but was not there. For I asked a friend one day what she thought of my tenant and his work.......and her only reply was, "It looks just like a garden to me." It was on a darkened night....the air crisp and cool that I awoke from a most perplexing dream. I saw him standing looking toward the horizon in the garden....the flowers seemed to be whispering with their scent a siren's song......and moved by my dream, I got up and beheld what I had just dreamed....there was Dan looking to the horizon....and I swore the flowers were humming a song that for the only explanation of the sound......it sounded as satin red. I went to Dan in an almost haze.........and he never stopped looking to the east.....and I asked him, "What is this?" |
 |