What Dreams Hold

It began with this red wax begonia.  The begonia with a center as yellow as cornmeal but looking like little paddles in search of a row boat or maybe a canoe.  The rain came with warning, pounding the dry ground until it softened and turned the color of chocolate.  Full of rushing water and life, flood waters rose just beyond my front door.  But I was safe inside and had my watercraft out back ready for escape, should I need it.  For now I peered out my window wondering what dreams hold as I gazed on my potted begonia.  Right then is when I noticed a person as small as a large ant scaling my begonia bloom. I guessed he was headed towards the paddles waiting in the center of my giant red wax begonia who was happy for the rain.  As I looked a little closer I saw it was man most likely lost and now found, who had shrunk.  He might have been our mail person, a nasty and miserable soul, who regularly leaves our packages out by the road to be ruined by the weather.  But here he was now, shrunken to the size of an ant, lost in a giant begonia plant just outside my front door.  The rain may have offered him hope and a chance at survival.  I watched as he used tiny hand over tiny hand to climb up what must have been a red Mount Everest, slippery in the deluge.  He edged towards the yellow paddles which could provide freedom.  As I sipped my coffee the itty bitty man in blue shorts and a white shirt with a pink rain hat finally reach the center of the bloom. He might have taken a breath, a momentary pause, before he turned to snatch a paddle.  And then another.  It was when he turned that I noticed something green strapped to his back, right before he slid down the rain-drenched petal like he was at a water park, up high and shooting towards the pool.  To my surprise he landed softly with a bounce on my wooden step at the base of my begonia pot.  Deftly reaching over his head he grabbed the green object that was longer than his body. I grinned as I saw it was a fern frond shaped into a canoe.  As if he was doing what he was always meant to do, he stepped softly into his perfectly-sized little fern boat.  With yellow begonia paddles in tiny hands he shoved off, launching into the rising flood waters beyond my stoop.  Set free.