An infant fern coiled, yet to unfurl and start shifting light from the air wavers as a foot pounds past and halts. Tenuous legs hold out against a heavy heave. In it: angst and grinding teeth unclenched, quaking wings of butterflies and worms wondering what’s that racket? A dam has broken, a mouth agape. And the weight of it all pounds out.

Gushing, softly smothering, as it unwinds – Breath runs off into an ocean of air quivering, tickling a beast’s back, and birds begin to crash by, oblivious.

So heaving softens to an empty pitch, a croak and a soft breeze, from a mouth agape but weak now, dampened to just a passing air, and on it not the forcefulness from which it came now but a buzz, a rhythmic hum, and the beast is a boy standing foot still fern tickling and a butterfly beating it’s wing, twice, un-berated, and off it goes on a song.