One morning last summer, I walked out to the alley behind my house and noticed several diamonds lying in the dirt. I knew they couldn’t be real, but they glittered in my palm as brightly as if they were. Plastic diamonds in different shapes and sizes, shining in the sun.
I put them back on the ground and continued down the alley, discovering a handful of diamonds behind each house, awaiting discovery. “Who did this?” I wondered and how far-reaching was this mysterious distribution?
Up and down the adjacent alleys I searched, east and west, north and south, but found no other diamonds. Somehow, these had come only to our block and I yearned to know how, who, why?
Meanwhile, I gathered up the diamonds behind my house, washed them and arranged them on the kitchen windowsill where they caught the morning light. Who? I kept wondering. Why?
Perhaps some children have done this, I thought. There were two little girls down the street from us and two others across the alley. Maybe I should ask them. Instead, I asked my neighbor.
“Oh, yes,” he said, “ I’ve seen the diamonds, but I like not knowing.”
That was the answer, of course, and now, a year later, a few diamonds are still visible, up and down the alley.
A glimpse of magic in the dirt.
