Sunday morning meditation here in the untamed woods on a ledge overlooking the domicile one calls home.

A cardinal chirps and chirps and chirps like a chick fallen from a nest. Sight unseen. Constantly.

As the planet rotates, the local star appears higher and higher in the robin egg blue sky.

Metal rebar from a halted writer’s cottage project rusts without comment on the surface of an object labeled a boulder.

Minutes pass and the unseen bird continues chirping, more slowly now, burning energy.

The writer rises from the woodland meditation bench, silencing the metronomic bird.

Every living tree has sent out leaves, casting larger shadows, partial protection from UV rays for a texting human.

Being human and nothing but, because of, really, the writer ponders the current state of global human affairs, constantly aware that 8+ billion of us, floating in our miasma of a microbiome inside the superset of states of energy that comprise our subcultures, affect one another in ways we choose not to see.

The lonely widow sustaining a small ecosystem when she shops for food and clothes on a very small fixed income.

The homeless man living under a bridge trestle in the middle of a nationalised forest preserve. 

The billionaire helicoptering onto a penthouse suite roof.

More and more, our social media connectedness cycles our awareness through these fleeting images of our species.

We compete/cooperate to build more creative shelters in the process.

Yet, have we changed all that much, still tied to ourselves as the bodies we are?

These words are written in symbol sets designed for us, not for the scorpionweed plants growing here at the feet of tall trees.

Will we recognise the symbol sets of those who go on beyond our capabilities?

Should we need to or want to?

Can we continue to find peace in our human form?