a most peculiar man

The broom could not recall how it wound up in the man’s hands.

It had to swept clean the storefront sidewalk.

Stray papers, glass shards, broken pebbles,

dehydrated aquamarine gum, and fossilized insects

had to be picked up.

This was its charge.

Yard by yard, inch by inch,

that spindly broom whisked along,

mindful of where to go,

when to move on.

And no empty thoughts poured in

or seeped out of its handler’s mind:

each moment was forever,

unbound, complete.

The broom never paused, not for a second,

not to follow the glide of some red-tailed hawk

floating above the sweeper’s sweaty brow,

or enjoy the joyful cries of children:

every centimeter of the street

melted into his fabric of meditation,

each insignificant breeze fluttered through his fingers and hair.

Nothing else mattered

but the rhythm of the bristles,

candy wrappers ontop more candy wrappers,

his mind’s long train emerging

from some long-lost tunnel

into a daylight meditation of

nothing more than right here,

right now!

Delray Beach, 2014