I Was a Minor Character in a Major Novel

I was a minor character in a major novel.

Backhoes scraped earth to lay pipe in a ditch

at ungodly hours, though I was awake, 

long before the protagonist. The bug zapper,

left on all night, smelled of burnt pine and plastic 

as a moth’s wings touched it and singed and fell, 

and in falling, touched it again, the sound of its char 

unheard by the love interest who lay wrapped in the sheets

next to the protagonist. The sun barely lapped

at their curtains, while I felt it broom away dew 

only just illuminated. I sipped cool water 

as a light breeze blew leaves from the diseased willow

and a spider leapt, throwing web between two stems

of a hosta, far from the hotel where the protagonist

had left a room service tray in the hall.

I didn’t matter. I was incidental to any story,

content to watch a ladybug on the small fire pile

I’d use later that night in the backyard pit.

I wasn’t driving any action forward.

I’d appeared only long enough

to advance the plot, enhance the tension

by denying a request, then retreated to the incurious 

space where no one ponders what you’re up to.

I was happy enough not having any drama,

and though I could feel in the green of a fern frond

or the crowing unseen bird in the stand of cedar

some transformation, my small arc

would have little impact on the denouement.

A life gets lived. It’s sometimes savored.

Sometimes it’s noteworthy enough to record.

Light reflected off water wavers so quickly

you cannot describe it in words before it’s changed.

The writer has to focus the reader’s attention

on what matters, to suggest some unknowable truth.

There’s not much here: just a porch, 

the ordinary awe of cloudless morning, 

the whine and diesel growl of a garbage truck 

prowling the neighborhood,

cardinals winging from their perches,

gnats spinning circles around the railing.