All We Have Is Time

All We Have Is Time

©2024 Ellen Bennett

           Verdant pastures spread panoramically, dotted with scarred, red-wooded barns, squat doublewides or old homes in various stages of disrepair. Along the way, an invisible wall surrounds me, like I’ve entered a balloon filled with thick humid air. It stops me at once. I dismount the bicycle and straddle it between my knees, catching my breath.

JOURNAL ENTRY: BICYCLE TRIP, JUNE 4, 2024

A pole barn with its open doors is strewn with equipment both inside and out. Flanking the open doors are two small windows, their frames of rotted wood barely holding shards of broken glass together.  An overwhelming loneliness sweeps over me, settling deep inside my gut. The edges of the defined glass look like they could cut through any excuse.

           A rusted tractor sits outside of the barn, framed in the brilliant azure sky. It is surrounded by tall weeds and overgrown grasses, their rough thorny slivers poking through rotted floorboards and around the engine housing. The now-defunct lift bucket lays dormant, like a dinosaur who gave up the fight. It bakes in the midday sun while accumulated layers of pollen, road and mower dust, bird droppings, hay, old oil, and grease disguise the rich history buried beneath age-old fingerprints. Working hands once controlled the levers that carried soil, rocks, manure, hay, and bags of feed, like clockwork against nature’s shifting weather. It has been left to decay, like everything else we humans choose to ignore.

            Several black cattle and two Paint horses graze lazily in the nearby fields, a gentle breeze whispers through the thickly leafed towering maples and elms. Such old trees, their secrets safely stowed within their massive branches, trunk, and sturdy roots. I think about putting my palms on the trunk to absorb their knowledge, but I don’t move because to move would disrupt the clarity of the moment.  

           There is an undertow scent of recently spread fertilizer. Dark tractor lines crisscross the road coming from the field with the livestock and into another almost barren field which is in the process of being sowed. After a few days, the once pungent, eye-watering—almost nauseating—odor of freshly combined, composted fertilizer becomes not at all unpleasant, almost sweet with the clean air curling in from nearby Lake Michigan.  

           Black Gold!

           A flutter comes from the top of one of the trees, a twitter and a call. A red winged black bird shoots from the cave of the leaves with a rustle and a snap as he calls to the others, possibly to join him in something delectable, or to throw them off the scent so the bounty will be all his. Do birds have this sense of propriety like their human counterparts? Do birds leave things behind to rot? When their offspring fall from the nest, do they save them?

           They don’t.

           Other birds of varying breeds zip in from different directions and bury themselves in parts of the trees. Their chatter blends in with distant cow moans and constant traffic on the highway which is located behind a thick line of trees. A heavy-sounding vehicle runs along the rumble strip then rights itself, and one of the Paints blows air through its nose as it flips its hay mound around into strewn piles. I watch the strands settle like pick-up-sticks. The aroma of sweet feed from a nearby tub is heady, the horse version of fresh-baked apple pie on a windowsill!

           The mailbox at the end of the hard-packed dirt and gravel driveway leans toward the road. The post is fading, it’s green paint flecked and hanging in slivers around a chipped and unbalanced base. The door to the box is jimmied with gate clips. It doesn’t close all the way. There is a stack of weathered flyer mail sticking out of the top. The house number is hand-painted on a piece of wood, which is crookedly fastened with nails sticking out of the back of it having missed the thickness of the post. I wonder how it stays on in the wind.

           A loud rustling from my right demands my attention and I swivel my head. Whatever it is, it is big. It sounds tangled within the trees and scrub. Then the sound settles, and a doe rises to the street from a shallow ditch, her hooves clattering lightly on the hard-packed dirt and gravel of the edge of the road. We come face to face, her mandibles working slowly on something she must have just picked off a tree. She is most gentle-looking, non-confrontive. I whisper to her twitching ears, “Hello beautiful, I am not going to hurt you, sweet momma.” She snuffles quietly through her nose and continues to slowly move the food around in her mouth, assessing me. Her front legs are slightly bent to accommodate the thrust of her back legs in case she needs to flee. I wonder if she has her babies tucked safely in the woods. Her dark eyes are steady on me. Perhaps she can smell that I am not a threat. When she sighs and calmly turns to go I tell her, “This is your land. Not mine. Thank you for making this moment count.”

           As I watch her white tail recede back into the safety of the woods, I wonder if I have somehow stopped time. But I know that time is involuntary, like the beating of the heart, or the push of the diaphragm and expansion of the lungs! What would life be without the gravity of time? Where would history go to be discovered, surely repeated? If we embrace it, time gives us room and breadth.

                                                                         ***

           I take a sip of water and remount the bicycle.

           The road continues curvy and hilly as I click into gear.

           This pause has refreshed and nourished my soul; the scene permanently imprinted on the part of my mind that collects precious moments.

           With the sun on my back and my eyes focused forward, I say quietly, “All we have is this, right now. All we have is time.”