“What are you doing?” I asked. John was sitting silently, and had been engaged in said silence for over an hour while I’d been distracting myself with summer chores. The whole time, or at least whenever I had glanced over at him, his eyes seemed fixed on something far away and distant.
“There’s a flock of birds, they passed overhead a bit ago, and I was watching to see them disappear . . . ” he said, his voice soft, like the sound of a dreamer mumbling as he turns over in his bed, “ . . . into the horizon.”
Looking out onto the distance, I said, “Don’t see ‘em.”
“But they’re there, or were,” he sighed. “They’re somewhere . . . ” he said, stretching, “ . . . I suppose in a land that I’ve heard of once in a lullaby.”
“A what?” I asked.
“Somewhere Over the Rainbow,” he said, his eyes returning to the hazy blue horizon.
We sat together as it grew dark, no further word passing our lips. Not too far from our porch was a little stream, and its melody entered my ears as the serenity of night drew in upon the world. A cool breeze washed over me, and I shivered a little. It was pleasant to shiver, to be outside, to see the world turning as it always turns. Night fell on us, and we dreamed.
Tale Told 