sitting here, expressively doing nothing
no hearing aids in, so there is a big silence,
anything the wind brings echoes off in a distance.
eyes closed, bits of sunlight flutter
in multitudes of openings between thousands of leaves,
fluorescent green, summer, Big Leaf Maple leaves,
on the inside of my closed lids, the leaf shadows patterns warm my thin lids.
can barely hear a whiff of wind,
can feel the breeze cross my cheeks.
i open my eyes and i am surprised by the blueness of the midday sun,
not a puff of white that i can see through these trees, not a rabbit stirring in this heat,
but i detect a smell, at first i think someone is barBQing, there is a woody smell but not the burning,
then i realize i’ve been watering the thirsty perimeter bushes along the cedar fence, and there is nothing as all pervading as the smell of wet cedar, barely covering the smell of wet moss and weed.
i sit still long enough to watch, the largest robin of the bunch scurrying for food in the wet grass,
i sit perfectly still as he comes within a foot of me with his mouth full,
i can see the glisten in his feathers, as he hops about until he can hold no more in his beak,
he takes off, perhaps to a nesting spot.
a lone hummingbird checks out one of the perimeter bushes,
then fast tracks past the neighbors redwood,
a few fluffs of cottonwoods drift past the flat blue of the sky,
they remind me of dandelion seeds,
make a wish, make a wish,
i think,
but all this thinking tires my “nothing doing”
and i close my eyes again, now only my sense of smell is working
and reminds me of my breath.
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