“I am alone… inside and outside of time” – Ted Kooser

I drive past neat little rows of trees,

empty mailboxes, and sleeping lawns.

Trying to shake off deep doubts

of morning, of a place I do not fit.

Clipping words from the bible and

a bevy of discarded self-help articles.

I would steer clear of danger

except I have no sense of direction.

It’s not about super-mascara
or fat-free substitutions
and it’s not about the bass
or the gift of clean water.
It’s not about being lonely at the table
or working hard or hardly working.
It’s not about the lost Vonnegut writings
or the faster more furious movies
and it’s not about genetics or evolution.
It’s about accepting how you fit
in a world full of borders
and it’s about limitless possibility
beyond what you can see.

I’ve been watching birds at the feeder for weeks, enjoying their foraging and flight, looking forward to their returning which has become a regular thing with winter setting in. I have books and apps that will tell me anything I could want to know about these – and all- birds. But I don’t look. I don’t research. I don’t analyze. For once, the life I see with the frolic and the feeding is enough without answers.

Some days when the grey is heavy
and the moon does not rise,
we take the path slowly,
watching deer cross the forest
at dusk, listening to rain
fall on the moss below.
With a push through leaves
we can taste, we move together
northerly, with the wind in the hills.

Weeks, months, years of driving by
stationary horses, content
to eat their oats and pick at the ground
with an occasional stare at the horizon
beyond their fences.
But today,
running horses,
one after another as I drove by,
and they didn’t seem to notice
much except their own circle paths,
running, running, through mud
and December as if one day
was much the same as the next.