Something That Happens Right Now

I haven't told this before. By our house on the plains before I was
born my father planted a maple. At night after bedtime when others
were asleep I would go out and stand beside it and know all the way
north and all the way south. Air from the fields wandered in. Stars
waited with me. All of us ached with a silence, needing the next thing,
but quiet. We leaned into midnight and then leaned back. On the rise
to the west the radio tower blinked-so many messages pouring by.
A great surge came rushing from everywhere and wrapped all the
land and sky. Where were we going? How soon would our house
break loose and become a little speck lost in the vast night? My father
and mother would die. The maple tree would stand right there. With
my hand on that smooth bark we would watch it all. Then my feet
would come loose from Earth and rise by the power of longing. I
wouldn't let the others know about this, but I would be everywhere,
as I am right now, a thin tone like the wind, a sip of blue light-no
source, no end, no horizon.