After finishing my duties in order to live, and especially on days for relaxing, I like to sometimes walk out from my house and beyond the town into a meadow elevated on green grass where I have built a gazebo. I was much younger when I built it. She is strong and made of oak. In this area the sun gleams heavy in that open plain and with the humidity so high, relaxing outside of shade is entirely too bothersome. The rare mornings I'm able to visit my retreat, though still sleepy, are the most peaceful of visits. Dew glistens from its nest in the grass waiting for the sun to drag it into the firmament-as far as you can see, even embodying the houses in the distance and on to the legion of trees I gaze upon from my lowly hill. A sight more beautiful seen.
            It seems to me the sun's strength is most profound when it appears harmlessly on the horizon, a stagnant globe as if sleeping-that harsh orange diluting the night. Soft light begins to overlap the tree's crests and trickle its' way into the horizon. Only in my imagination, deeply suppressed, are the thoughts of fire or discomfort. In the mornings, I only see life and I embrace it entirely.
            This one day, however, was no morning and perhaps one of the more perturbing days of the summer. It had rained earlier and walking along the trail away from town, I could see cesspools barraging the meadow along side of me and a brigade of mosquitoes hunting the air. Other than the gravel crunching beneath my feet, I could not control the impression that I was wading through a marshy swamp. The sound of crickets and crows from within the woods were unnaturally loud, so deafening I had to manage a tight leash on my thoughts or they would wander astray. Still lingering in the ethereal air, sloshing above me in the atmosphere, were sullen and inky clouds putrefying themselves in the distance.

            Upon reaching my gazebo, I relaxed, sitting on the bench, intently listening for the mighty wind; impossible with the ruckus. Disturbed, I sat up and did my best at comfortable, my ritual.
            Rapid footsteps awoke me from my divine reflection. My son came raging along my tracks, his right hand fisted, and his face of confined joy. I was somehow brisk and knew he had something for me even before his hand was upheld for my acknowledgment-his face then pure joy. Gripped, for who knows how long in his fat and sweaty, dirt encrusted palm, was a lonely seed. The size raised my brow and I asked what he had and where he got it. As he answered, I inspected the seed.
            "I think it's a seed! I found it in the road...."
            'How strange', I thought, and took the time to provoke.
            "What where you doing in the street?” I asked and studied him well.

            He gave me his best answer in that he journeyed into the street for the seed. Probably so, I figured, and further interrogating seemed unimportant to me after seeing him say it.
            The seed had the shape of a peach seed in that it was bulky, engraved, and perplexing in portrayal. I assumed from baking in the pavement, however, discoloration could not be found upon the utmost scrutiny. Almost brown-though I am sure it had a green luster.

            "You want to plant it?” I asked.
            "But that‘s all there is!" He fearfully exclaimed.
            Truly so, I returned the seed and clasped it in his hand as I guided my son away from the gazebo. We walked carefully to not disrupt the scattered sloughs and I continued our conversation.
            "That's true , Matt, but don't you want to see what it will grow?" I implored, "What if it gets so big you can climb in it or make fruits we can eat?"
            His head, silent, wandered to his hand.
            "Wont that be cool!?" I cried.
            Still looking dubious, he agreed and we planted the seed in a muddy and shallow hole, together, away from the gazebo. I could not help but sense what I thought was regret as we stood above our creation, his treasure no longer visible, completely inactive in his mind as if it were shut out-and the crickets were screaming.
            "Let's go buddy, it's going to be a while,” I said and jumbled his hair with my hand.
            Now as I write this, my body brittle and my soul ripe, I cannot help but rest my eyes upon that original tree grown into a collection separated from the woods. Its trunk, like a human arm reaches with a myriad of fingers into the sky. The fruit, a Spanish melon, I believe, grows as it should and provides my family and I nourishment along with, more recently, a fresh pecan tree I took the liberty in planting; all of them harboring a profusion of life, from squirrels to birds and bees and even this vicious strain of vine that gives birth to an igneous orange blossom-a nearly exact manifestation of my adored sunrise.
            That day, complete with its dreary showers, the eerie sounds of the woods and the intrusion of the blood-sucking mosquitoes, still, and more each visit where I watch the trees breathing where we had planted, becomes far more satisfying than any morning visit, as if each falling leaf and each budding a new washes my spirit clean.
            My son now reverently plants any seed he can find and the new trees that spring up only solidify the sublimity of that day.
            Forever I'll recall the livid objection from my son and how passionate he was of preserving the seed the way it was, not knowing that, if it so grows, one will become many. I only wish to see the gazebo, or better even yet, to not be able to see the gazebo amidst our copious forest of Spanish What-have-you. Our lives created together to grow beneath the sun.