A quiet, perfect, glass world

This is a terrarium I created sometime last winter. The plants are still alive, the bicycle still parked in its lovely spot by  sheep and rock and ferns.  It's the thing I look at when I'm writing, when I'm working, and sometimes, just when I'm in the room, and feeling out of sorts and away from where I want to be.  It reminds me of the things that make me happy. If it's a day like today, when I am stuck home sniveling with a swimming head groggy and grumpy that a cold has had the audacity to affect me, and annoyed with myself for somehow letting this cold affect me, well, I can look at this terrarium, this little glass world,  and remember the cold will be gone in a few days, and soon, I can go back out there, to the trees, to ride my bike, to run, to hike, to play. This is not a permanent state. I look at it some more and the stirrings begin.  They turn and toss vaguely inside and become a thing, a thought, a want. I start to desire. That is when I remember the point of it, the reason why I created it, why I tolerate the sight of so much dirt in a jar. It has a mission, this silly little oversized vase with its miniature plants. The most important thing about the terrarium, the thing I can never forget, is its role as a predictor, a marker, a promise of the future, a goal, a harbinger.  I look through the dusty glass into a moment of thought in stasis, a moment I captured with  rich, moist soil and green ferns that when looked upon becomes a hint of fields and forests and quiet country. Then, I remember, I captured this world from a loved and almost lost memory of a different yesterday, and a dream of a desired tomorrow filled with wet, dark, spring soils and flowering fields; of forests and country with  quiet bicycle rides and roaming meadows where shady trees and busy creeks mark long-shadowed days of summers as they fall joyfully into crisp, sunny, golden falls. All that in this little, quiet, perfect, glass world.