Negotiation

Chipmunks, squirrels collecting bitternut hickory, chirping against a small owl cruising low beneath the trees. Everyone has gone this morning to school or work. Laundry rolling, carpets vacuumed, cleaning in the bathroom on my knees. I'd like to be Whitman, praising the pure contralto, Wynton practicing all day. But like my father dying I cannot hear what I cannot see. Locally there's politics, processing points of view. Eventually coming to a decision, building or not building windmills on the sky, bridges in the sea. Insignificant and mighty happenings seem the same from my vantage ageing gratefully, inexorably, planning how to die in my own damn way.