Seeking Much, Finding Very Little

It was that time of morning when what you mainly hear are the perky songbirds singing and a dove's call.

Walking.

Into the post office to get stamps.

"Did you find what you were looking for?" asks the clerk in a friendly manner.

Into the office supply store for envelopes.

"Did you find what you were looking for?" asks the clerk as I pay.

Into the grocery store for two packets of soup, one with crab and one with chicken.

"Did you find what you were looking for?" asks the clerk at checkout.

Someone has discarded several large, broken chunks of marble from a building being renovated. They rest against two trees several feet apart, in the shade.

I wait at the corner so a woman in a dark SUV had proceed on her way. My pace has slowed lately; I used to be a fast walker, then average, now I am very slow.

The air is fresh and cool, the breeze from the west lessens what would otherwise be more of the heat that has visited us all this week. The sky is Northern California blue, the girls wear light sundresses, and so wrap their arms around themselves from the breeze.

The flowers open toward the sun. I stare at a form asking me for a sequence of numbers I've entered ten thousand times before but suddenly now, I've forgotten them. I wait, hoping they will come back.

Everybody has so many questions, or more accurately, the same questions, but nobody ever asks, "What is it that you are looking for, exactly?"

Because for that one there can be no answer.

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