Phoenix
by Dale J. Sprague
Flash Fiction
Summer Snow
Of nature's seasons, there is a time of new growth when a special place upon this Earth stages an affair known as 'summer snow.' The early days of May are bright, clear, and warm, and on these days, soft white puffs like snow drift upon whiffs of delicate spirits just passing through. And brief passing spirits are all that is needed for these small entities, together as one
Long ago, they were conceived upon the wind, upon a day much like this bright day. These individuals are very small and difficult to see. They exist as male and female. The male begins by rising above the borders of water and soil, and remains there with others in brotherhood. The male is the seed, rising and falling within the ethers above, each repassing each other, waiting, preparing for the aestival affair
His counter part, the female, also rises, but by herself, and without delay she seeks out the brotherhood. She is born with a gift, and rising toward the heavens, she chooses her seed, to be taken by him to their own domain as drifts of 'summer snow' afloat upon the most delicate spirits. And there, the passage of his inborn knowledge finds its way to her heart and primordial purpose. She then sets the beginning upon the waters of a pond or a wandering brook in the same spirit he had set upon her
As the spirits everywhere move, she begins her dance, fulfilled, wandering upon peaks that reach for the heavens..rising upwards with her head to the stars, she falls again and again to release the beginning of another affair for another time. Such is the warm charm of these little creatures together adrift but for a single day of May. And even though they arise, live, and die, existing for only a brief moment of a lunar phase, they are also a labor of love as any could be, the need of all life to simply just be