Just To Be Present

Mountain bluebirds perched on mullein stalks, voices at the moment mute, as I sit in the foothills, in the land of the Arapaho and Ute, aware I am a visitor, I come and go, I live down below, I watch a woodpecker arrive to perch on another mullein stalk, it lives in this wild preserve where I have come to sit and walk, where sunlight glints on the tops of grasses and tall Ponderosas line paths that lead to mountain passes, but I am here just to observe and listen, to be alive, just to be present.