I wrote this very short story last year. I suppose this is the right time to post it.

Have a nice Monday night, to all who are reading this (and all who are not).

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The shape of a man, an older man, sat.

The man was rounded in spots that were once sharp and pointed. He sat on a faded park bench, under an oak tree in the park.

So many trees surround the old one, sitting sadly and solemnly, his figure is disappearing beneath the leafy hut of branches. His wrinkled ears perk to the sound of the wind through the branches and the drying, falling leaves.

Falling. Disappearing. “Strange words,” the man uttered, out loud, almost too loudly. The statement echoed through the leaves.

The sun is setting.

Sunlight fell down on him as though it were rain. Heavy drops of rain after a long, steady draught. The drops of sunlight opened and shut in his eyes. And all the while he looked onward, into the fading day.

A grumble. A grunt. Aggravated silence.

Sunrises, sunsets, sunshine. The sun once stood with outstretched hands, the whole world was never-ending sunlight. Now the sun falls down, relentlessly, down, down, down, with heavy hands.

“Isn’t it strange,” he thought to himself, “That all my life is a life behind podiums, standing up tall and making decisions.” He sighed and looked the other way. Frowning? No, not quite. But his lips pressed together while shadowy thoughts churned through the ratification processes and withdrawing pulse of his brain.

He paused. He sighed. Sunlight winked at him in the puddle by his left foot.

“So many people counted on me,” he grunted out, this time out loud, this time his thoughts grew into words for his audience. His audience of leaves, shaking with the chill of the Fall, hoping to land where snow will blanket them and tuck them in at night.

Hope spills through fallen leaves just as it spills through the night sky as bright stars, or the soft prayers of little children, before they go to sleep.

“So many people counted on me,” he said these words in a broken voice this time. Pieces of words strung together in a hopeless sentence. A sentence quivering and shaking before an audience of fallen leaves and unbreakable wind with glares from the setting sun.

“And now, where are they? Where do they sit while I sit? Where do they stand?”

His face folded and creased, mimicking a leaf – mimicking the leaf, sitting delicately on his shoulder.

A little girl walks with her mother on the lane, holding her hand. Her hair is in pigtails, her dress is blue. She skips sometimes, because she is happy and because her mother is near and most of all because it is still sunny out.

She is holding her mother’s hand while she skips, and sometimes she twirls in her dress and sometimes she asks for an ice cream cone. “Vanilla with sprinkles? Just this once?”

Maybe. Maybe. Maybe.

The girl’s other hand clutches a green balloon. Bright Kelly green like the grass on a baseball field, or the green flecks in her mother’s eyes that stand out on Sunday, at church, during “Amazing Grace”.

Sometimes hope sings. Sometimes hope dances.

“Strange words,” the girls hear. The woman and her baby. The woman and the girl.

“Look, Mommy,” the little one says with a squeak.

Her mother turns to see him, sitting up straight on the weathered park bench. Mahogony wood scratched with unshapely hearts and broken, etched words.

A gasp. A pause.

“Mr. President,” she whispers, solemnly.

He sees them. He waves. The old man stretches out his hand.

“Hello. Hello.” An echo; a smile; a sunny disposition.

She waves, brightly.

Her balloon flies free into the fading sun.

Hi, Everybody.

I have another poem for you this week. I wrote it fairly recently. I hope you like it.

Happy Tuesday, everyone.

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The book spilled open on the blanket

underneath the willow tree

pages pushing through the wind

now speeding to page 53

Words falling into the breeze

for a moment all sentences mix

but the book slams shut the next instant

as the picnicker comes back to sit

In the distance he hears the ocean

The wave song now lulls him to sleep - 

He's dreaming of days gone past;

Dreams never were his to keep.

He wakes up and blinks at the twilight

The breeze lulls him back to the car

He picks up his book and his blanket

And drives beneath gallons of stars

Driving home he feels a bit better

from his day spent reading, alone

The sun has set now, off yonder

And his heart, it pulls to be home

The breeze gently pushes his bumper

The moon calls his name o're the bend

 Book bindings squish words in the backseat

And the stars light his way home again.

Well - 

Here we are. 

It's been a while, right?

I've been writing. So, I thought - 

I'd like to include my old friends....

I'm going to try to post on this once a week. 

 I just, I want to write, 

and keep writing. I've been writing, re-writing, and editing my novel.

If I were sculpting it, the thing would have shape to it, and from a far, far

distance, would look like a beautiful thing. But up close, however, especially if you were equipped with bifocals, a flashlight, and a scratch to the head,  this sculpture

would clearly need things like arms and legs and a birthmark in the shape of Idaho 

on his left big toe.

I've been chipping away at it, nonetheless.

And when that novel is out, and free, and ready to be read by other readers, who are not you,

(but most especially you)

you can say you knew of that book before it even had arms or legs or a left big toe.

And that is my gift to you, because you are my reader...and because it's been so long, hasn't it?

I've also been typing out poems, with a Ticonderoga pencil in my teeth, or my hair, or next to my foot.

They are the best type of pencil, you know.

And I've just been thinking about this one thing, in the back of my mind, all the while:

I am a writer, and so, I've been writing on my own for a while, and, well, hows abouts I share

a little bit with you again? My friends. My readers. My audience.

My friends.

 If we were in Alice in Wonderland, you would be Alice and I would be a tiny strip of candy, with the words "Read Me" in large typeface, all over the packaging.

And then you would read me, and so you'd grow to be 100 feet tall, and, everybody would be all like, "I always knew that guy [girl] would grow up to be something."

That's how it would happen, I just know it.

I do hope you forgive my leave of absence. I do hope you are still reading this very sentence.

I have a feeling that you are.

So.

I'll start off with a poem I wrote, about a month ago.

I was going to start off with a little anecdote of how I dreamt of a dinosaur-zombie apocalypse two nights ago, but, I'll keep that one in my pocket.

 That one's for keeps.

I hope you like this, oh readers {my readers}.

And away...we...go.

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The family’s shoes are in the kitchen, stacked luminously,

These soles, they stretch and grasp at the moonlight, 

but the light, it hides, thin and wan behind the clouds.

Tepidly they sit, and wait, through the long sigh of the starless night;

Each soul is beaten and tattered,

Too many pathways,

Too much scuff.

Boots and sneakers alike, sandals and peep-toe lady shoes, they are all

the same, and

 stink

 of days past:

this smell does not smell like the glamorous wiff of daffodils or

Tulips.

You see, they do not stink of beauty,

but of restless nights and days walking in circles.

These penny loafers hold the stench of keeping up, two by two they

step up 

into cars and out

 onto the ruthless, empty gaze

of parking lots

 in the heat of a staring sunlight,

or the office kitchen, where coffee spills and falls like

acid rain.

Two by two they stop short beneath a desk, or a table,

beneath a sigh or long lost gaze,

 or suddenly these closed-toe pumps must face

 the unforgiving stare

of what lurks beneath the couch

for hours as the family stops

to take a moment

to take it all in.

No, these shoes do not smell of roses, but, 

instead, their leather is worn, like a grandmother’s soft hands,

a grandmother who kneaded a life out of nothing but

prayers whispered to a starless sky

just like tonight

just like many nights

but these soles, these souls, they wander and wait

Waiting, wading, through another day.

I can almost hear the footsteps, I can almost taste the pavement –

Too much pavement, too much of the same, too much of the unexpected -

Perhaps, Perhaps.

These soles, sitting in the dark, seem wary of another day; 

but still they wait, still they wait

still they are ready,

so come what may.

September 10, 2013