Invisible

Sometimes it seems I could be the only person on the planet. Stepping out on the deck past dusk, in that threshhold between daylight and deep darkness, there’s no other human face.

I can imagine all the houses filled with their people, but only imagine.

Far away from this ridgetop, in the low places, hidden and damp, hundreds of tree frogs sing about love, and longing for the next rain.

The goat star, Capella, flickers red, green, blue—these days often mistaken for a drone. I know better.

I see you, luminous star-bird, hovering curious as a hummingbird above the tip of a redwood.

So still, yet chimes tinkle and clatter from another part of the yard. One brown leaf, caught on a dead spruce limb, swings back and forth, a little pendulum out of time.

Who sees me? Who knows I am still here?

If I walk into the woods right now, and fall into the duff, would I make a sound?