We drove fourteen hours that day.
All the signs for “World’s Largest Unusable Wood Sculpture of a Common Object” passed in a blur.
The towns slowly becoming indistinguishable, except for the name of the object.
We had family there, roots in grain and soil and cow muck,
But the horizon left the back of my neck prickling-
It was far too empty, too obvious.
Not flat the earth, but a swiftly rotating disk that we clung to by the edges of our tires.
It’s hard to explain mountains and forests to those without them.
To explain that it makes someone a smaller piece of something larger that is in turn
A piece of something larger still.
It is hard to describe that looking out at the horizon is not an endpoint-
But a convergence.
All things, all sizes blended together in a never ending ring of life.
There is beauty in both the stark and the populated.
For more horizons of various kinds, my fantasy novel, The Guests of Honor, is available here. Its sequel, With Honor Intact, can be found here.