Listen to Jim’s 3-minute audio podcast:
http://redclaydiary.com/
or read his tale below:
JIMMY THREE TAKES ON THE GRINNING GREEN CHEESE MOON
Jimmy Three, all half-dozen years of him, stoops low in the grassy front yard of his family home. His head is close to the ground, his fingers busy sorting through a patch of clover.
He is searching for a four-leaf clover, the most elusive and sought-after treasure in this week’s world of Summer Kids.
Jimmy Three plops down on his fanny to relieve the strain from bent knees, takes a look around to see what he might have missed during his focused quest. Not much, apparently. The concrete sidewalk still leads from front steps to asphalt avenue. The nearby ant hill continues to teem with critters oblivious to small boys on front lawns.
Jimmy Three glances up at the sunned wispy blue sky and notices that part of the daytime moon is missing.
He dabs at his perspiring brow, realizing that he has never thought much about whether the moon might collide with the sun one day. He giggles and realizes that something like that could probably never happen.
Jimmy Three searches for four-leaf clover until red bugs and growing thirst distract him. He runs into the house, scratching legs and grabbing a jelly tumbler from the kitchen cabinet.
Slurping cool water is good, he decides. He holds the half-filled glass up to the window and briefly imagines he is a swimming ant afloat upon a clover leaf, enjoying the prismatic light that bends and dances therein.
After sundown, after a day of play and quest and chore and reality laced with fantasy, fantasy laced with reality, Jimmy Three returns to the lawn, this time the backyard lawn, to watch for fireflies, listen to insects, identify which distant barking dog belongs to which neighbor.
Lying on the wood and cloth folding lawn chair and examining the sky, he watches stars peek out one by one. Lone aircraft blink red and white far far above. Way off to the west, Jimmy Three sees the glow from downtown Tuscaloosa and listens to train whistles to the north and passing cars to the south and radio comedy shows from across the street.
But he doesn’t see the moon.
Hmm, guess the moon can’t be around every night, but I sure miss it, Jimmy Three thinks. Being a wistful tad, he closes his eyes and examines the moon in his mind, remembering the time he trained a playmate’s binoculars on the partial orb to see whether it really looked like green cheese. He laughed in awe at the pock marks, the cool white glow, the mysterious distance, the unattainable puzzle of it all.
Climbing into bed at bedtime, hugging a pillow, Jimmy Three continues to allow the surrounding yard and sky to flow through him. The two open windows of the bedroom invite night sounds, nearly deafening silences, to jostle his imagination and feed his enthusiasm for the awaiting sunrise.
And later, in deep sleep, Jimmy Three views the rising moon, the rising green cheese moon that gently grins at him and soothes his red bug skin
© Jim Reed 2018 A.D.
http://www.jimreedbooks.com/podcast