Monarch

 

I lie on my back in the cathedral of the forest.

 

The moss beneath me is soft and springy, the rich green that, more than any other colour, represents life. It covers the humps and mounds of the earth like a soft blanket, gathered under the roots of the stately beeches that form the pillars of my church of silence.

 

They stream away from me, upward, ash grey and silvery white and charcoal, capturing the many shades and tones of the moon in the smooth columns of their trunks. Their strong branches form my Gothic arches, their leaves the variegated canopy of my chapel. In every shade, from holly-dark to chartreuse, emerald to olive, they shift continuously, slowly, noiselessly, a breathtaking ceiling.

 

The sun streaks back between the leaves, pillars of light matching the pillars of the beeches, spears of brilliance pinning me to the mossy floor. My church is shattered into soft pieces of sun and shade by these beams of radiance from the distant and invisible sky.

 

And all around me, the butterflies drift silently from perch to perch with lazy flutters of their wings. I feel their tiny feet, a breath like the brush of a feather, as they alight on my skin. I feel the tiny currents of air they disturb as they float past my face. I watch them noiselessly splinter the beams of light and shade as they glide, my faceless congregation in this church.

 

Perhaps someone is calling me, even though I would not hear them. Perhaps everyone has forgotten I exist. I don’t care. I am alone and awed in my cathedral of the forest.