Ah…a moment’s silence. It happened while I was back in the cabin’s corner plugging in the phone to charge. Turning from that chore, it was suddenly there. The hush. It’s still relatively quiet. Furnace is off.

Donny must leave early today and of course…I forgot the phone. Two trips now over the ice, so he can call me in when he’s ready. Grateful for Dad’s cane. Realizing what we do to preserve ourselves…naturally, without thought almost. Realizing the sky is different going out than going in, north and south, the direction in which I move. Realizing a few minutes bring change: first time out a brief hint of clouds and nothing else to be seen. Second time the clouds have passed. Stars are peeping like chicks.

The morning birds have not arrived. It is a little past six and solidly dark at the mid-point of earth and sky that I watch. The fence is visible only with an adjustment of the eyes, having blended in with the morning’s night sky. I watch it anyway. I watch the stillness. I watch the fence become visible.

I am witness to the fence. I am audience to the woods. And they to me.

Where is your center? In the silence? In the dance? Carving wood? Cooking? In the presence of a child? Where you are without distractions? Isn’t that it?

For some of life, distractions become the show. The whole show. There is nothing else.
Distractions are life’s commercials.

What am I still distracted by? What am I distracted from?

The show is now forming over the fence, two pale blue lines appearing beneath the dark sky taking on the hue of blue.

(I have been absent for a while. Blogs are at times distractions and, at other times, not.)