Over

It is a nice place to be. I wish you were here.

Let's imagine we are just a little bit above this place, maybe in a hot air balloon, looking down from the air, or, better yet, having an out-of, body experience, floating over a flaring world. Close enough to see the details, far enough to hide the pain.

It's very green, isn't it? Even so late in the year. The houses are charming, many of them, and the hideous ones are all sequestered together, along broad, meandering streets.

There are fields and forests, swamps and ridges, rivers and lakes, just siting there, looking nice. Long ago most of it was under cultivation, and there was no room for forests our swamps to sit, looking pretty. Now we have pretty nature, to fill the spaces between our bedrooms.

Nearby we have our pretty stores, our pretty gas stations, our pretty dumps full of pretty refuse. Not so pretty from above, maybe, but better than those hideous houses. A church, a school, a park, soccer fields stretching to the horizon, and beyond.

And beyond: the twin ribbons of highway stealing away, and the pretty cars speeding along them, seeking the promise yet unseen, but hoped for. Or just going to work, or the mall. Nice, though.