I sat down and was looking to jot some notes down for a poem. I was reading a bit, but eventually got distracted by everything that was going on outside my window. So I ended up jotting down notes about what I saw, and watched the city instead.

Looking out the window, I saw my neighborhood begin its day. I saw a city worker sweep the streets with a metal shovel. I saw a man leading a police officer down the street, the two of them taking turns pointing in every direction like weathervanes caught in a storm. I saw a man lock his bicycle up with a length of chain and a regular padlock.

At the corner, I watched a man (wearing jeans) dip down a do a few quick knee bends. An object on the ground caught his eye and he picked at something (a coin? a necklace?) half-embedded into the sidewalk. Eventually he got it out and held it up to the sky. I know he did this to see it better, but from where I was sitting, it looked like a victory, like an offering. Behind him an old woman hobbled to the mailbox with a pink envelope. After mailing it, she hobbled back, exactly the way she came.

I've seen a steady stream of joggers, with their ponytails and tennis shoes. There have been at least four buses, a dozen bicyclists, and as many taxicabs as people yawning. Outside this window the world is waking to the day, a bustle of vectors and itineraries. Everyone it seems, even the bird who landed momentarily on the bicycle with the padlock chain, is in a hurry and heading someplace else.

Except me.

I should do this every day.