Doctor's orders

"try walking at least one hour a day"

I saw a rack of clothes sitting in a front yard and various pots and flowers and plants and strange odd looking people standing around and moving around and cars parked around the house on the corner with the for sale sign where the sweet little old lady lived and she had awesome gardens in her yard by the creek where the flow of the water must have eased her dreams but she's dead now.

I saw an old man with a gray beard wandering up from the creek as if perhaps he had spent the night and only now at three in the afternoon decided to move on and beside the creek I saw a beaten shell of an old building with access still on one side to a tiny chamber where innumerable teenagers drink in the privacy it provides I only think of skunks and raccoons and move on.

I saw a subdivision slowly come to life where once a gravel pit ate away at the side of the hill in the furrow created as the streams gather up the natural valley and then above to old railroad tracks gone now for a trail and the consumption of ground continues above in another natural flat spot and standing there so close now to the tops of these surrounding mountains and yet up and around this corner lies another vast meadow yet where wildflowers grow as if magically induced and trespassing is forbidden but to those who take nothing when they leave.

I saw a shadow cast by the sun beneath the trestle where support beams refract sunbeams and draw lines in the grass. I see the shot before I can take it and know the vantage point like instinct so I scuttle off the path right to the spot on the ground where the cross-hatching of girders divides the dirt. Looking up directly into the sun I navigate the rays slanting to where it might catch the subtle division between available or not.

I saw a little old lady with a cane walker clacking along the road surrounding the college and a regular bus rider I see her in the neighbourhood a lot and here she is trotting around the school as I take the diagonal down the stairs and through the buildings and out to the corner and there she is caught right up to me she did damn little speed racer clacking along and I pause as if to wait and speak with her and the noise stops and I move along after all how trustworthy must I appear to such a dear and frail child frantically clutching her purse beneath her arm.