A Lease on Wonderland

Dressed in Green

Matthias was first to lift his head, though he hated leaving the quivering Esther still huddled on the ground as he pulled himself to his feet.

They were in a wood more than a park, though it was gentle woodland more restful than a pile of trees in the center of a city. The breeze sang in the lush green trees and a late afternoon sun of sparkling komorebi danced more serenely and perhaps even more lovingly in its loneliness than in any waltz. There was freeness and candor to this small grove like the freshness of an open mountain pass but with a homier feel. There was nothing tight or intoxicating like the park of Heartland. Contrariwise! It was so real that it was more surreal than anything surreal he had ever imagined— at least super-natural to the natural. It was as though he himself was the literary figure standing in a place far more real than he was, or at least more genuine, which was not quite the same thing. He had even to wonder if he was the dreamer or merely a part of someone's dream or if he was both at once and that it really did not matter either way.

He cocked his head like a squirrel might in contemplation more than a man feeling regret or resentfulness about what most would find troubling notions, and just like a squirrel he quickly forgot such depths of the psyche and went back to his usual more limerick mode of spirit. Though in his spiritual jig, he did not lose at all the liberating feeling of this woodland as though having a sort of tea party with his surroundings for banter more amorous than any pining dirge— or at least purer.

Though, as an afterthought, he had to add that he may have pined for woods such as these without knowing it for years as he drank in a great sip of pine perfume before turning round to the woman on the ground. He smiled then like a baby and shook his head for a little laugh as though looking down upon one sleeping like... a baby.

"Wake up, Alice!" he said cheerily leaning down and tapping the woman's shoulder gently. "We're quite safe now. I only wish I had a hat. Then I would call all this a day quite successfully finished!"

"Mmm..." Esther moaned.

And his song at last had words:

"The wispy spring of teas was what drew me nigh.

The grunt that was to follow was from gloom striking my eye.

The phanty in the corner thought 'twas the call for ease.

He wasn't wrong, though not the tease

For knocking heads to cry.

The washing was to clean my sheets

In tea from head to feet

—Eight feet, in fact

I'll not subtract—

For this audience quite discrete.

The sweeping was to clean my ears

In tea from all my fears

—Nine years in all

It's no short fall—

Of landing through clock gears.

But now I'm here with pallet rinsed

By trees and I'm convinced

—ten tints of green

They're all serene—

I would dare no word be minced.

The wisp of spring in trees was what drew me up.

The song that was to follow was from the scent more than some sup.

The angel in the corner thought 'twas the call to sighs.