Bale Scissors
Could they have landed this far away?
Lost them last Fall during a rogue wind, when the tent they hung in defied its moorings and set sail through the wood. Sure enough there was the telltale four-sided depression in the leaves. I scanned the area methodically, starting on the left, looking vertically, then horizontally, in rows so as not to miss a glimpse of even the tiniest iota of turquoise peeking out.
I had other scissors, but these were the ones that had cut the twine on the hay for eight years. How had they lasted so long? They weren’t even full-size. I’d bought them at a DollarTree in Princeton, WVA on a road trip with my 8-year-old. I needed to put a button on a coat so I purchased a tiny sewing kit.
The leaves were pressed flat in a perfect 10 x 10 foot square as if an invisible house was squatting there. Not only had the tent flattened them, but also 18 inches of wet snow and several more inches of pelting rain over the weekend. The bale scissors were somewhere under the pre-decaying layers, a sea of future dirt. And I thought of a sea, a lake, a stream; how these morphing plants mimicked the liquid nature of water. Plants move, too. We don’t always notice. If we could speed it up, who knows what drama might enfold before our eyes?
There! What’s that? A burst of color in the monochromatic diorama. What a bright shade and the texture is either plastic or alien spawn. Was it a runaway balloon? Of course I shot a picture. Going back to delete the extras, I enlarged the photo. Who thinks Winter is colorless now? See you in the Spring scissors.