Litter

This weekend, I traveled with a friend to celebrate spring in the country. Bright yellow daffodils nestled in newly minted grass and waved their welcome in the warm air. Wild violets peaked out with soft heads and faced a brilliant blue sky. Low grasses in the fields made our hike and conversation easy as we trekked to the river. With eyes glued on the protective bluff and budding leaves, I might have missed the trash, but my feet found their way onto beer cans, glass bottles and a discarded tin sardine lid. A faded red plow sat abandoned in the distance.

Not caring about their lives and strewing torn wreckage on the landscape of my life, they littered. Litter left for others to pick up, fix and relocate. The garbage of their fractured lives interfering with mine. We stooped down and met their presence in the dirt and picked up these traces of their carelessness. We touched their thoughtlessness. We cleaned up their mess.

Still others leave behind that which cannot be seen and it remains as ugly. Handprints frozen on the heart long after an angry slap on the face. Souls permanently bruised by harsh words. Memories imprinted as brain trauma from brutal attacks. There is little escape for that which is trapped within for human fragilities are not easily handled.

As the sun sets and we look back across the fields of our lives, what will be left behind?