They sat on a hilltop in witness to worldview. Before them shone open of worked winter field, dark brown of the fresh turned earth different in sight from pale of unturned soil and stubble left fallow until spring. Beyond, fields of sheet shown green and bright as, beyond, lowland bottoms of the river marked with stands of shadow woods.
In the sky above the trees, cloud of ducks circled, cycling down in tightening fall into hidden hole of open water. He watched the cloud, the spiral and fall and rise and circle-back if perceiving something wrong and repeating further pass. In time, all the cloud was landed and all that remained in sky were cirrus, blue, and halo of high sun.
Beside him, Annie watched and witnessed all the same. She stared then timbered draw at edge of the worked field where a mother and dawn emerged from the woods, their brown coats—hidden in woods—prominent against the dark of the fresh-worked field.
He wondered how she saw it, how scene recorded in her mind.
Wanting to know, he asked, “When you look at the world, do you ever think of it first in language: words and metaphor and symbols—details and descriptions—before you ever think in view of material things?”
Annie listened, mused, having never thought of it that way: the way she made and wrote her world, and listening, thought in better way.
She answered neither yes nor no but with the question, “Why?”
He looked away, eyes lowering to opened earth before them as he shrugged and smiled, making light of the question and presenting it mattered little if he knew.
“I don’t know,” he spoke in hesitance, buying time and feeling foolish, searching for greater reason why but all he found were the words he spoke, “You just seem like one who might.”
Raising eyes, James looked to the draw on which Annie’s had remained.
The deer were gone. Spooked, they returned into the trees.