resting on my elbows I carefully picked plants and herbs for a Spring tonic

Resting on my elbows I carefully picked plants and herbs for a Spring tonic

fiction
Edward w Pritchard


Winter would not subside this year and all of the innate goodness in me had perished. No one had slapped me in two quarters of a century; my body, my soul and my mind were disjointed and fractured and I had a burning unquenchable thirst to connect to the earth I stood above.

Frozen and alone up Looked I. Stars and galaxies were aligned in the southern sky. Sharp as stomach pain star light replenished my sapped original being with vitamin D and elemental potassium.

Dropping hard to the cleaving ground, resting on my elbows I carefully picked plants and herbs for a spring tonic. Using a leaking bucket I sloshed half frozen water from the pond being mindful to scoop a few appropriately reflected stars and galaxies from the skies above into my concoction.

Crossing my arms in front of me I tapped my open palms to my temples three times and repeated a few foreign forgotten chants from my ancestors before I drank and gulped half of elixir in the bucket.

Hearing returned first; turning my head to the West I searched for the wind. I felt the pulse of small animals moving behind me.

For a long time I sat with crossed knees on the chilled ground and thought and planned this years garden. As I sat under the stars, heavily on the ground the cold wind caressed me from the West as new thoughts and inspirations were born unto me. Renewed I wait for Spring.