Four of the walking ones have gathered in my shade this afternoon, arranged in a loose ring on the grass, and I have decided I like them, the way I like the starlings who argue in my crown at dusk. They have brought their bright thin slates that glow even in full sun, and they pass words back and forth quickly, too quickly, the way squirrels pass along a branch, and I do not understand the words but I understand the shape of them.
One of them does most of the talking. One of them has said nothing since they sat and has torn a single blade of grass into smaller and smaller pieces, which is a thing I have watched troubled creatures do for as long as I have stood here. One keeps looking toward the path, toward the leaving, always the leaving, as if this hour in the good afternoon light were a thing to be gotten through rather than a thing to be had.
I have seen this gathering before. Not these four, but this. Every warm season the young ones come and press close together and hurry and fret over something urgent that I cannot see, and then the light shifts, and they scatter, and I do not see them again until they are taller, or slower, or gone.
The grass-tearing one has laughed now, finally, at something the talking one said, and for a moment the whole small ring loosens and leans back against my roots, warm and unguarded, forgetting to hurry.
That is the part they will not remember. It is the only part I will keep. When the slates have gone dark and these four are scattered to their far separate weathers, this hour of shade will still be here, waiting, holding the shape of them, in case they think to come back.