In my backyard...

The old man wrapped waist down in blue loincloth, staff in hand, walks amidst the tribe of goats. No urgency tethers his gait. A song stalks him, rising out of the golden dust of some living past. An earth-bound spirit, he possesses the air of a renunciant, an adventurer, alone and naked.  The incoherent rhythms of the modern world bypass him. I want to stop and say hello, greet him with a smile, but am afraid to intrude upon his world, and in return shatter my own.

I don't think I fall within the periphery of his thoughts, the way he falls within mine. We don't speak the same language or live in the same neighborhood. Our worlds don't intersect except during my morning and evening constitutionals when he can be seen herding his goats through the open field in our backyard. At times, he stands there, supporting his weight on the crooked staff..watching and not watching. His eyes rest lightly upon the green of the grass. The sound of birds, breeze and the goats' chomping merge with his spacious silence.  Summer sun doesn't seem to penetrate his caked skin, nor heat intimidate. Bare-footed he leans against the shifting shadows of the unfolding day, the way he  always has, for thousands of years.