The Things I Learn From Doing Nothing All Day

I learn many things each day; I learn all I need to know
from sitting alone in the bedroom,
staring out the window and playing guitar,
making music no one will ever hear,
composing symphonies already muted and vanishing.
There are things I learn from the hardwood floors,
and the cold dirty tile when I walk barefoot,
from the simple stitched embroidery of my drool-stained pillow.
I’ve learned the gift of sleep is only greater than the gift of waking
if you have lost your last pleasant memory.
There are lessons I have learned in tasting Petrarch and the dust of ancient poetry,
of drinking literature while the light is still out,
of feeling the sun and the clouds waft over my naked body after twenty minute showers.
Some days I have a strong desire to fill all this emptiness,
other days I cannot distinguish myself from unopened books on the shelf.
The time I spent in the kitchen looking outside at the trees,
following the squirrels and the birds and then gazing forever
at the bread crumbs scattered on the countertop.
There is wisdom you learn from silence.
When the stillness of the broken peach trees
you planted many summers ago
match your own motion, it is then
that only your breathing exists. And there you are alive.
One can only truly understand love in death.
When the solemn face passes through airy joy and disengages the mind.
Because here, where I have done nothing,
everything I have loved has turned to dust.
I know this is true;
I sweep it off the floor and throw it in the trash every afternoon.