Poplar fluff floats through the air, to me they look like fairies dancing in the sun. I hear the sound of a gentle breeze shaking the leaves in the trees, flowing through them dancing with the fairies.
By the stream the smell of wet mud and leaves intertwines with the floral bouquet of summer. Those smells combined, smell like childhood.
I lay under the weeping willow, looking at the blue sky through the trees flowing branches. The sun glistens through. With each breeze the sun rays scatter beneath the canopy, glittering and glistening onto the sweet green grass.
I put on my rubber boots and walk to the stream. The tree canopy is thicker here, the air is cooler. Somehow bluer.
The banks of the stream are short and muddy. My boots sink into the chocolate brown sludge. I suck my boot out. Stepping into the stream I turn and watch as the mud reclaims the space. Filling up again as if my step had never been there.
The water trickles over the mud on my boots, washing it downstream. The trails of brown are enveloped by the clear flowing water. Now I can hear the stream. It flows over the small rocks down here. It trickles and splashes. Flowing ever onward, almost magical as I watch the water go.
I lift a rock and watch the world beneath it scramble to hide. There are squirms and skitters moving in the space. A frog leaps over my foot, startling me. I step back, my foot twists on the rocks behind me. I fall! My backside splashes into the stream. I reach out my hand to pull myself up, and my hand disappears into the wet muddy embankment. I look at my arm as I pull my hand free. It looks as though the earth is giving birth to my hand. Spitting it out.
I hold my mud caked hand under the water. I watch the stream bubble over it, as if it were just a new rock for the stream to navigate over. The mud is washed free as I shake my hand. The water is cold. Colder than I thought it would be. My butt and hand are wet and cold.
I try to walk up the embankment, it’s too steep for me. I try to climb and my knees are swallowed by the mud. I push myself up, and my hands are taken once more.
I push back as hard as I can and am freed with a wet sucking sound. My butt once more in the stream. The stream flows around me, just another obstacle, just like the rocks.
I put my hands in the water and look at my knees. The thick cool mud is in my boots now. It’s all over me. I hear my sister call my name; I see her face above me.
She reaches out her hand and I climb the muddy embankment holding onto her tight. The mud sucks off my boot and my socked foot squelches into mud. I leave it, I let my sister pull me up and get my boot.
I lay back down under the weeping willow tree, and watch the sunrays dance with the leaves and poplar fluff, a dragonfly joins in. I feel the heat of the sun warming me now. The mud dries hard and heavy, as I lay absorbing the sights and smells of the summer.
Victoria Smee is an outreach worker who writes in her spare time.
She has enjoyed writing all her life and has recently started to make more time for her short stories and poetry.
