Purple Berries

The world lies still, soaked and saturated with meaning, waiting to be squeezed. I walked up a hill in Elkmont, Alabama today, and the way was rough but pain free. Atop the hill the sun was so bright I couldn’t see anything. I turned around to behold a dead field washed in the sun’s white light. Everything took on the white-washedness, including myself, and I climbed a bit further to an old rusted trailer that had most likely been abandoned and still for decades. I touched it, and wondered if it ached for the days when it pulled bales of hay with purpose and dignity. Something purple in the white tugged the corner of my eye, and I looked down to see a cluster of berries I’d never seen before. I plucked them up, and proceed to hunt until I had a full bouquet of purple berries and red leaves. I laid them out on the rusted trailer, an offering to the God who showed them to me, and turned the forgotten trailer into a holy altar. I knelt, and watched the tall grass that had overgrown the field dance and sway with the wind. No one but God knew where I was, and no one was there to absorb the beauty but God and me. We enjoyed it together.