Simple Pleasures by Charles Finn

I would like to live at the pace of stones

Have a mountain’s idea of time

Spend my days in the company of shadows

Companion to inchworm, turtle, and tree.

It’s hard, wouldn’t you agree? Everything happening so fast

And knowing so little, only that life must end

Yet here we are—you, me, every last one of us—

Forever and always just getting started.

Which is why I come down to the river

Simple pleasures, that’s what it tells me

A kingfisher spiking into the water, a cottonwood leaning in.

Trout asleep in the shadows. I close my eyes

Let my mind drift downstream, breathe.