Feux Follets

Flurries fly by, the will-o’-wisp, as I struggle to keep my eyes open. The car shakes ever so slightly, and the scenery plays like a film rolling through the windows. I start to wonder if I’ll ever get to where I’m going, and if my whole life hasn’t just been spent sitting in a seat, staring wistfully at the sky. The past is a distant illusion. There goes a tree, five thousand blades of grass, all running away from me into nothingness. I reach out to touch, but the glass doesn’t roll down. I am fraught with doubt. I blink, and my eyelids struggle to rise back. The landscape seems to me a pure fantasy, which weaves in and out in a tapestry, dancing in ecstasy to human imagination. The conifers spike up with wit, and the clouds become all sorts of shapes in the mischievous mind. Hopes, dreams, aspirations, I see them on the other side of the door, through the glass of the window pane, through the distortions of my cornea, and their lights frolic free in the horizon, full of fool’s fire. What’s left in it all but to laugh and enjoy?