Hole In The Hedgerow

I’ve always been fascinated by all the little mysteries of the world around me. The little ones. Sometimes the really little ones. Like a crumbled-up receipt blown into the corner of a drainage ditch. How’d it get there? What was purchased? Who purchased it and why? My thoughts cascade into an infinite number of directions. Who? Why? Who were they? Where did they come from, literally, where were they born, and what unfathomable series of life choices and chance encounters, mistakes and accidents, turns and misdirection, that led that person to buy whatever the hell it was they bought. Did they litter? Did they drop the receipt? Why’s it crumpled? Were they ashamed of the pack of cigarettes they allegedly bought? Do they smoke? Are they trying to quit?

I watch leaves blow in the wind. The way they wave down at me. The physics and the science of it all that makes them move and shift ever just so. I think about the wind and the thousands of miles it traveled and then all just to wave them ever just so. Fleetingly. I watch wind move through forests, the way the mysteries can be zoomed in and back out, from our big blue ball shooting through space to the little green leaf waving at me.

I see graffiti and I think the same. When was it put there? I read the names written in library books and wonder who they were. Where are they now? Names in hurts scarred into the bark of trees. Are they still together?

I see tracks written in fresh snow, right after it falls, and I’m always amazed by how much the world moves around without me. The little creatures living out their lives right under my nose. Opossums with their little star shaped footprints that they left in the night on their way to or from their jobs where they do whatever it is the things opossums do at night right under my nose.