Itell my mother I'm ready to come with her to the fields. She shifts the basket of grain from one hand to the other, momentarily at a loss for words. Then she gives a little smile and nods.

   "Oh, right," she says.

   This doesn't come easily for her, sharing.

   We arrive alone on a plowed field in the cool morning air. I take off my sandals so the black earth squishes up between my toes. Its energy rises through my feet, up my calves and thighs, into my belly, and through my whole bloodstream. I close my eyes and breathe in the rich, mineral scent. I've missed the feel of this earth, its rhythm and its voice.

   And then there's a song rising from the turned earth, and it's in me and through me and all around in the soil that roots me. It's a calling song, calling seeds to sprout and roots to stretch, calling green life to surge up stems and lift leaves to the sun like hands raised in prayer.

   I open my eyes and there, at the edge of the field, the black bones of a cherry tree are bursting into flower. How did I miss that before? The petals billow like great puffs of pink smoke. I'm as drugged by their beauty as I was by the scent of narcissus so long ago. I let it pull me across the soil until I can run my finger along a leaf's edge. It's jagged, like a cricket's leg.

   I realize now how much I've missed Earth, all of it: this serrate leaf, on this tree; and these grains of soil, moist beneath my feet; and the perfume of blossom and loam and fresh breeze mingling in the air.

   A gust of wind wakes me from my reverie, blowing a flock of pink petals from the tree. They swirl down, landing on my hair and shoulders. Laughing, I turn to show them to my mother.

   She hasn't budged. She's back where we started, staring at the ground. I follow her eyes.

   Each footprint I made in the soil is bursting with green. Those nearest me are just brightening with miniature leaves nestled next to the dirt. But beside my mother, where I first felt the earth's song, the outlines of my heels and toes are blurring beneath eager, thrusting plants, some already a few inches high. If I look steadily enough, I can actually see them growing.

   I look up at my mother's face. Now she's staring at me, her eyes as huge and round and blue as the sky. Her hands hang limp and empty at her sides; she's dropped her basket, spilling all the grain out on the ground. In the air around me and under my feet, everything is thrumming.

A bird calls out in single notes, a cascade of three.