Sit still for a hour or two on Monday
and nothing is happening to disrupt it.

Sit still listening for a disruption
or another sort of wrinkle in the universe

and still nothing is happening. Trees
and other plants seem to have lost their way.

No sound of wind in them; not a single bud
scratches at the window. Distant cars pass by below

on the connecting road; otherwise, that’s all.
That and the clicking of computer keys

which I turned to just to make a sound,
any sound at all. Prove I am alive

this way: I can hear clicking, can make
my fingers wriggle. Earlier, I played the guitar

badly, trying to recall how I once moved.
Once upon a long ago I could play.

I doubt I played well but I didn’t care as much
back then. So I set the guitar back on the stand

and try not to care again. I am very different now.
Not the same person, I think; wrapped in the same skin

and the same bones but so changed — I never could
have spent as much time as this doing this —

clicking on keys, setting a guitar back after playing
for five minutes, sitting still and listening to what seems

like nothing that keeps happening so many times
it feels continuous, smoothing out

the depths of being into a bland stream.
Did you hear the water changing the earth? Of course not.

You didn’t hear anything, old body, dear friend.
Try as I might, what I hear vanishes outside me.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
onward,
T