Target Practice

Added 23 June 2003

I thought I needed to write,
escaping out the back door at lunch.
Only bird song came to me.

I lazily flicked a pebble
in the vague direction
of the base of a broken bottle
lying thirty feet away in the transient sands
of the Santa Cruz River.

That action took me over from there;
trying then in earnest to hit
the glass, preferably even break it,
smash it back to the sand it once was.

Even on the rocky embankment
I ran out of stones before I could succeed.
No matter.
I didn't need to hit it.
I didn't need to write.
All I needed was escape.

All I needed was the bird song,
which came to me freely,
and a moment of contact with the Santa Cruz.

Written 10 April 2002