not very long ago

While waiting at a bookstore counter, a small girl stared down at my shoes. After a time, she looked into my eyes and smiled.

As I walked across a baseball field, I paused to consider a wooden stick that stuck out of the ground and leaned against a metal fence.

A gray old woman in a wheelchair waited by a curb. From time to time she glanced in my direction. Her face remained expressionless.

As I sat in a parking lot, I gazed at a tree that had grown around a chain-link fence.

A large formation of geese flew overhead in a northwesterly direction. I continued to hear their calling from a distance.

A woman I did not know looked at me and smiled. I smiled back at her without saying a word.

A sheer curtain from an open window blew against my leg as I wrote this.

I paused for a moment as I allowed strong feelings of contempt to arise, and then slowly exit from my awareness.