Rustle

And like one who listens to a hidden revelation, I listen to the summer leaves . . . a timid, anesthetized sound, descending from the distances of sleep . . . a pale sound with a wheat scent coming from a rural seclusion . . . intermittent, composed, improvised on the strings of a serene breeze. It neither runs on nor prolongs its musical segments. The sound of summer leaves have the ascetics of whispers and the austerity of calling. As if this sound is mine alone, it kidnaps me from the heaviness of substance to the lightness of radiance: There behind the hills, and beyond the imagination, where the apparent and the concealed are equal, I swim outside myself in a sunless light. And after a nap that resembles wakefulness, or a wakefulness that resembles a nap, the rustle of leaves brings me back safe and sound, sorted out of apprehensions and obsessions. I don’t ask about the meaning of the sound: is it a soliloquy between two sister leaves, or the air’s longing to a siesta? A speechless sound dandles me, messages me and turns me into a vessel that exudes what isn’t it or in it . . . as if it were a sentiment searching for a sentimental look-alike.