A friend

I went up into the woods the other morning, thinking about a friend of mine I had visited a few weeks back.  She had a sugar bowl, somewhat deep, with a "normal" metal spoon that she used to scoop out the sugar for coffee.  I had tried the spoon, felt the dismaying lack of its ability to work within the space of that sugar bowl.  It was not meant to be there.  It was almost crying out in dysfunction.    I began to look at the bowl, the sugar, thought about my friend, her way of moving through her kitchen towards her first morning cup of coffee, and wondered if maybe I could find her a spoon...

I had a backpack with a handsaw.  I walked along, enjoying the quietude, the morning mist, the sense of stillness around me.  I knew the area, recognized rocks, trees, patches of moss.  I ventured into another direction, thinking to watch for my friend's spoon, and then I saw a large limb that had broken off a tree and sensed a bend.  Felt movement.  I walked closer and saw her spoon.

The piece is now in my house.  The spoon within it will wait for me.  It will be there emerging within every moment that I imagine its being there.  It will be nice.

Collecting

I have been collecting pieces of wood.  I have been watching the spaces around wood.  I have been walking, walking, walking through spaces of watching the spaces around the wood that I collect.  Sometimes I have not been watching so closely.  Sometimes it has only been a moment of experience.  The touch upon a surface.  Á wafting roughness of a piece of bark.  A sense of light touching my eyelid when I close my eyes when sunlight filters past a meshwork of leaves when they move ever so slightly when the breeze sifts space around me.  I have been collecting myself within it all.