A quiet morning

The tree shouldn't be there. A few inches of soil on a slab of limestone, wind off the water all winter, and somehow it has held on long enough to turn gold this fall.

I came down to the dock for coffee, not for this. The fog had settled overnight and was just beginning to thin, you could see it move, slow as breath, lifting off the surface in pieces. A heron stood somewhere out past the railing. I could hear it before I could find it.

Mornings like this make a case for staying small. The tree doesn't know it's beautiful. The fog doesn't know it's leaving. The whole scene exists for no one in particular, and would have happened whether I came down for coffee or not.

That's the part I keep coming back to. So much of what's worth seeing is already underway, indifferent to whether we notice. The work is just to be there when it is. To bring a coffee. To stand at the railing for a while.