Ephemera from the life of a Southerner, an artist, a graphic designer, a man who when he sees a glass half-empty wonders "who the hell drank my water?", a cultural Methodist, a spiritual questionist, an unfulfilled comedic writer, a geek, a father, a husband and a reluctant adult.
I’ve mad that same comparison before. Caveat is that we don’t suffer the persecution in childhood because most kids don’t even consider someone they know doesn’t believe in god. But when we become adults we have to hide for fear of social and/or professional ostracization.
There are people we meet during life that, regardless of the time and distance separating us, leave us with a continuing yearning to connect, reconnect, learn how their lives are going or at least know they’re okay. Recently, I reconnected with a few of these people. And while I don’t expect a frequent, close friendship to suddenly comeback, I am especially glad to have found these friends to plug the holes they left many years ago in places far away.
Clouds like sedimentary rocks
moved towards me.
Scraping away the sunlight
in their path from the sky.
The winds blowing past
carrying whispers of rain
and danger.
An apocalyptic dusk was upon me
within minutes
of first spying
the gun metal gray cliffs rising
over the parched hills surrounding me.
An inner turmoil of awe
and fear ebbed and flowed
watching the morning dusk
swallow everything.
The sky cast a pale light
from all directions
making the world around me
like a miniature set for model trains
in someone’s basement.
One by one
the streetlights
blinked on
as if marking the exact position
of the new twilight.
Their glow was a pitiful defense
against the deepening charcoal sky.
The wind-gossiped rain and danger
arrived when the last of the blue heavens
were hidden from view.
Natural instinct for shelter
battled with desire
to grab a camera from somewhere
to capture the frightening beauty
of the tempest around me.
In the end, I chose experience
over the captured pixels.
The binary ones and zeros of life.
The cloud-stones eroded bits
of ice and water down upon everything.
Bruising the land as
it slowly melted into its skin.
Soon the day’s second dawn arose
to find a disheveled And grateful world.
The black hole
opened up
pulling the walls
in closer.
They bent inward
as the atmosphere
was sucked out.
Breathing became
difficult.
And thoughts?
Well, lets just say
the mish-mash of synaptic
firings was more
primordial than
anything.
Reeling. Teetering.
Panicking.
I tried to remain
calm and outwardly lucid.
I do recall some things
from that day.
But most thoughts
were of the terror.
Before I left,
the nurse handed me the
phone number for
the oncologist.
