For the Birds

Quiet walk in the woods
On a cloudy winter day
Ominous rain clouds
Promising impending precipitation
Keeping away human crowds
So that I can enjoy my walk
In relative peace
Trekking up the rust trail
Shrouded in black oaks
Branches dripping green Spanish moss
Cloaking black eyed brown headed juncos
Hopping down the to the ground
In search of a meal.

Rain spattering against remaining
Bay leaves clinging to trees
Covering me sporadically as I continue to walk
Around the bend tree gives way to scrubs
Red-limbed manzanita
Blooming with bells
Blossoming white against
The dark green leaves.

I sit quietly on the stone bench
Hard and cold and comforting
Quiet time alone on the hill
Watching in the light rain
A red-shouldered hawk streak across the sky
Coming to rest on a bough across the meadow
Copper chest puffed out
Beneath hooked yellow beak
Piercing black eyes searching
Looks down at approaching noise
Of two hens clucking their way up the hill
Disturbing our reverie
No longer focusing on the hawk and the view
Persistently pulled away from
Meditative state
Where I search for something
For there is not a someone
Who has yet brought me the calm and quiet
I can always find
On a rainy day hike alone.

Thick bread crumb filled females
Rounding the corner
Miss the hawk as they talk
About hair styles and other feminine wiles
Meant to disguise their plainness
Behind a veneer of attractiveness
While the hawk
Now on the ground
Blends into gray and brown thistles
Behind rows of black and white feathers
Scratching the surface dirt
In search of substance
And sustenance that lies beneath.

I take too much time
Watching the birds
To do more than pause at the summit
To look out over the small town
Clouded in falling rain
Surrounded by greening golden hills
I have chores at home
Forcing me to leave
The security of solitude.

I linger for a few moments
Before leaving the trail for the empty parking lot
Holding on to whatever it is I've found
And have to forget when I walk
Back to town down the road.

Late morning bike ride

I spilt air freshener on my shirt today. Now I know what my hell smells like. Febreeze.
I don't want to smell only flowers. I want to smell dirt and rain and flowers muddled together in a spring breeze. The concentrated dose overloading my senses.

The air freshener was from the bathroom at work. Contained within a small bluegreen vase, it sat on the stone counter. I placed it there while I changed my shirt.

I needed to change my shirt after an impromptu lunch break bike ride. Lisa is out of town. I was feeling lousy. I need more exercise and sunshine when she's gone. The chance to ride through the cool late morning past cow pastures dotted by valley oaks and spring streams that will be still running in summer is too much to resist.

While going down a narrow country road back into town, I decided it would be a good idea to wear fresh clothes at work. I thought it would be fun to wear a new shirt. My normal shirt is a blackbuttondownpolyestercotten blend that does not ventilate well. The new shirt is a short-sleeve, black cotton polo. A cooler shirt appealed greatly to me while I sweated in my black pants and t-shirt while riding.

The shirt I choose to wear is an unauthorized style, different from the one I've worn every day to work for nearly a work. Everyone I come across mentions the wardrobe change. It was as if I walked through the taupe work halls wearing a rainbow clown suit.

My manager, busy with a corporate audit, didn't have time to immediately address the situation immediately. My supervisor doesn't care about my wardrobe as it does not directly relate to my work productivity and it is unlikely it will get him in trouble.

When I finally have a moment with my manager to address the uniform alteration suggestion, he looks less than amused.

All during this hour or so it takes for me to be told to change, the lunch rush at the restaurant began.  Five tables full of old women and fellow employees hosting clients see me leave in one shirt and return in another.

I go to the server station, grab my backpack, and head to the guests' bathroom. Normally I would change in the employees' bathroom, but there wasn't the time for such societal conventions; people wanted their asparagus soup hot and I needed the greater gratuity better service would garner.

In my haste, I knock the liquid freshener onto my shirt. Only a few teaspoons of it spills, but it's potency is enough that it is an ever-present nuisance for the rest of my work day.

Taking it off after work was the second best part of my day after riding my bike with my daughter that afternoon. The third is certainly my torrid paced race against melancholy I took on my thirty-minute break from work. I felt so alive as I whipped past vineyards and auto repair shops that I forgot how much I missed her. But without that great race, I wouldn't have had this fantastic story to tell to you.