I know how it was in that time
sixty years ago when roads seen
from above were little more than
two thin tracks through grass.

My mind has heard the noiseless roads
cutting unfenced fields, passing cherry groves,
skirting steepest hills and flat lakes,
making settled burgs where roads cross.

I know how it was in that time
when many-handed harvests,  
sweet smells and back breaking work
were wrenched away without referendum.

Wrenched away by Ford's cast iron.
Wrenched away without option of staying
to enjoy the scale of day-long trips
on foot, in wagon or buggy.  

Our innocent grandfathers too,
wrenched away, not unwillingly, from plowfields,
to be told by newspaper and newfangled radio  
of the one-day Atlantic crossing.

I know how it was in that time.
I've seen it from three or five hundred feet;
the quick shadow and lake-mirrored
image of fabric covered wood and wire.

I've gently flown, pocketa, pocketa,
in that time; in a ship as much a product
of those shifting decades as of its tinkerer/
designer, builder, pilot, Pietenpol.

It's a plan in itself,
Not an open invitation for suggestions
To go on long walks, or dancing,
Or paint-balling, or take a drive
Down to the beach.

It doesn't mean I am free
To do one of the hundreds of tasks
You decide are more important,
In an attempt to fill my day
With a different kind of meaning.

Today I am doing nothing,
Because I have become lost,
In a world where doing something, anything
Is so expected of ourselves and each other
That simply doing nothing is viewed
As a waste of time.

We so rarely have opportunity
To have the conversations in our heads
That determine who we really are,
As we watch the moments floating past,
Lying under the stars.

Today I am doing nothing,
Please understand that what I desire,
Is silent doorbells, unknocked doors
And that the phone doesn't ring
As I curl up by the fire.