The Robins are everywhere in the early dusk…swooping and whisking by into the saplings and tall brush that run directly along the trail and lighting high into the tall trees along the river. They are all talking at once like excited school children on a playing field. I think no one is listening amongst them.

Even when they stop their singing, calling and whinnying, I can hear the flap of wings in broad movements and the flutter sounds of adjustments within their perches. They are slender and plump, large and small, young an old, all headed somewhere that I don’t know. As they rest their wings, they become orange red blooms on the barren branches of dark winter trees.

The sky is gray blue. Cold. I realize that I can see my breath as I walk. The skin on my face tingles against the air.

There are people running past me occasionally. But I must go slow. I must savor this outside, this smell of no things: no air freshener, no perfume, no body lotion, no things that nature did not make. There are times when I need this and the birds and the sky and the sensation of my skin and the proof that my breath exists outside of me.

This is where the proof of me exists, in this outside place where I have left as many  no things as possible behind me for a time. When work comes into my head, I say “No things.” And when I see someone and wonder if they are trying to achieve a goal, I say “No things.” Observing and listening is all that is needed. 

I turn at the bridge. Day has but a heel in sight, walking out the door. Past the field of saplings and brush, far in the tree-lined horizon, the sky blushes a bright orange red and Evening reaches down, rushing Day out. I notice the calm. The Robins are gone from the sky.