RACECAR - Dave Lewis

The Palindrome Family, Otto, Eve and their daughter Hannah, were fortunate to live on quiet Top Spot Road outside of the town of Noon. They had few worries about their pets, livestock and little Hannah being in danger of traffic. The Top Spot Road had been built  by the state to connect the town of Noon with the  town of Gnu Dung by way of the bridge across the Rio Grimy river.  Since the bridge had been destroyed by  Hurricane Ellen five years ago and not yet replaced, the Palindromes were the only regular users of the straight and level, two lane Top Spot Road.  Since their toddler Hannah was fond of crossing the road to play in a pond there,  a lack of traffic made things easier for  Mom, Eve.  

Last summer the situation changed for the Palindromes.  Nolon, the quarter back and most popular jock at the Dumb Mud High School got a driver’s license.  Nolon thought his family’s car, A Toyota, was really a racecar .  One of his favorite pastimes was accumulating all of the car’s drag-race statistics. With his girl friend, “Evil Olive”, handling a stop watch, Nolon clocked his time for 0 - 60 mph acceleration,  the time and speed for a standing quarter mile, and top speed.  Naturally a Toyota wasn’t distinguishing at those events so Nolon couldn’t brag among his school mates that were piloting Mustangs, Camaros, Firebirds, Chargers and Porsches.  Nolon studied how to soup-up a Toyota.

Nolon could only try changes that were not visually apparent because his dad, Bob, would have demoted him back to a bicycle if he knew the car was being raced.  Nolon had to be satisfied with a number of tweaks like changing tire pressure, removing the air filter, changing the timing, and reducing weight. He took out the back seats, the spare tire and jack, and Evil Olive’s purse, for testing with less weight but he had to return them before he got home.

When Eve informed Otto about the crazy car antics on Top Spot Road in front of their house, Otto’s reaction was, “ Dammit I’m Mad!”  Otto decided to put some bumps in the road that would discourage Nolon from using it as a raceway but it would be past Otto’s driveway so the family wouldn’t be bothered by it.

Otto was a welder by trade so he made an adjustable steel wedgie as long as the road was wide and painted it yellow. The Otto  Wedgie had wheels at each end so it could easily be removed from the road. Otto painted a yellow stripe across the road so that at a distance it wasn’t obvious if a bump was in the road or only a stripe.

Nolon was annoyed by the wedgie but even more so when only the stripe was there and he had slowed down to ease over the area and found a flat level road. It irritated Nolon that some one was outsmarting him.  When he complained to the sheriff about an insidious bump in the road and the sheriff found only a yellow stripe, the sheriff treated him like a nut case and ignored further protests.

On his next excursion down Top Spot Road, Nolon was expecting only a paint stripe and not a bump in the road,  he hit it a fairly high speed.  There was more than paint there now but the Wedgie had been lowered to just an inch in height so that even though he had hit it high speed, it was a gentle bump. Later when he came at it from the other direction at a higher speed he encountered Otto’s latest gimmick: off in the weeds there was a hidden tank of high pressure air.  Nolon’s first crossing had triggered a pneumatic piston that raised the wedgie to its full height.  Nolon found himself in a Toyota sinking in a nearby pond.  A front tire had blown and the wheel broke off completely during the trip to the pond.  Fortunately “Evil Olive” was not aboard on that trip. By the time Nolon  got out of the pond, only the yellow line was at his launch site.

Nolon is riding a bicycle now. His dad, Bob, had managed to tow a Toyota out of the pond but it had to be scrapped.  A  horizontal yellow line can still be seen on Top Spot Road but its purpose is unknown by the Texas  Department of Transportation or TDT.  They think it might have been a paint test that was not recorded. 

                                                           ***

Juxtaposition - Joan Brady

My newspaper shields me as I sit alone, silent among others 

together, close around marble tables, their coffee cold with talk.

I read that, in Los Angeles, an elderly bear was found soaking 

in a suburb hot tub. A photo shows him passive, sitting sedated 

in a cage, while officials seek a zoo. He can’t survive on his 

own anymore. His teeth are broken from foraging in garbage cans.

The window holds us close in comfortable identity, 

a fragile, clear division taped thick with notices of possibility,  

echoing all our unarticulated dreams of transformation.

Beyond, into traffic four lanes deep, a deer leaps, 

propelled from the cliff above

by her own infinite motion, 

born of gravity and the wind, legs buckling, as she 

hits concrete, feet sliding under her, 

and I tense myself against the inevitable 

hard-soft sound of metal hitting flesh, 

as I watch her plunging through and past,

until she vanishes up into the hill across, 

still thick with oak and blackberries.

A waitress, all in black, 

with red curls tied at the nape of her neck, lights candles

in the deepening dusk. Her silver bracelet, 

circling a dragon tattooed on her upper arm, 

reflects their warming flames, 

while outside, cars transform themselves into 

patterns of moving lights, detached from substance, 

but never direction.

No point in hurrying. Already the dexterous, 

long-clawed raccoon, intent on filling his belly, 

will have crawled through my kitchen window. 

If I arrive before he finishes, 

he must be pushed, snarling, out with a broom. 

When, at last, our own species faces 

it’s own approaching extinction, 

I feel assured he will do nothing to save us.

                               ***

The Slide Downhill - Michael James

An idea brought to my attention in a Sherlock Holmes novel concerned the advisability of elderly persons sticking to routines they establish in mid–life, so that should an unfortunate occurrence leave them immobile or incommunicado, their friends and rescuers would know where to search for them. In that particular story, an elderly gentleman had abandoned the path he usually followed for his evening constitutional, whereupon those concerned with his whereabouts were unable to determine them.

For my part, after digesting the value of the advice proffered by Mr Conan Doyle in his tale, I decided to follow it scrupulously. I set about organizing my life accordingly, and started with a tabula rasa both in terms of my movements and the places where I put the dozens of little things floating about my domicile. My work has its own determiners and I am unable to change much there. What I was able to rationalize brought a pleasant surprise: much in my head had been been cleared. I found myself to be  free of certain clutter, my mind dwelling on more rewarding thoughts and concerns than was customary.

And now that this system, which I have expanded considerably, has been subjected to a falling-off in areas other than daily doings, it seems likely that a breaking of simple routines could indicate an underlying disorder. So I have become alert to signs such as reaching for a memory or a word and not finding it, and I have watched myself carefully, looking for examples of weakness so that I might head off its development.   

For a while I thought I was successful. I chose my words with care, thinking ahead to circumvent potential loss of memory. I wrote notes to myself concerning things I did not wish to forget, secrets I was unwilling to share. And it worked until quite recently. But the other day, when a lady I have known for years entered the dog park and I wished to introduce her to my companion, I had to stop in mid sentence because her name would not come to mind. I admitted to a “senior moment.” The lady glanced at me wonderingly, provided her name, and, seeing my embarrassment, looked away. She left shortly thereafter.

After the new arrival had departed, my companion said in a kindly voice, “That happens to us all sooner or later. Of course, you weren’t ready for it quite so soon.” I sat dejectedly and felt the years piling up like the hemlock cold rising in Socrates’ calves, or Macbeth not being able to say “Amen” to a dinner guest’s prayer.

It would be grand to be able to say it ended there, that the blanks in the mind, the names or ideas forgotten, have retreated, but apparently they haven’t. Numbers give me the greatest trouble: phone numbers, pins, ages, recent dates, birthdays, license plates. Do you know the license plate number of your car? No? I didn’t think you would. I’ve tried to memorize mine and can’t. I can remember swaths of “The Ancient Mariner,” “Kubla Khan,” and speeches from Hamlet, of course memorized in youth when the memory slate was cleaner than it is today, but I cannot now remember one letter of my car’s license plate.

These changes taking place in me are not restricted to memory. My dog has begun to act differently around me. He used to come whenever I called; now I have to raise my voice as in anger, have to call him names, and he takes his time responding even when it looks as if I will take him for a walk. He seems insecure as though uncertain of who I am. Perhaps it’s the walking stick I have taken to using; perhaps it’s my frequent displays of anger that estrange him or cause him to think I will use the stick on his back. But he’s not used to being beaten so I’m at a loss to know where that would have come from unless his perception of emotion is so keen it overrides custom or vision.

There’s no telling where these lapses in memory will end, in an veteran’s home possibly. I keep intending to visit the local one and get myself signed up so the paperwork will be in order when the day arrives that I am unable to look after myself. I wonder about the  quality of their libraries and food. Do they need books? Do the inmates read? Or have they taken to copying the young, faces glued to their little screens all day long?

I’m unready to sign in to an old folks home; I find being with old people exclusively to be a bore. First off, all they like to talk about is their maladies. It’s bad enough to have illnesses let alone to talk about them all the time. Do their companions actually listen, d’you suppose? Most people are too darned busy to listen to old folks whine about their arthritic joints and their irregular bowels.

So no old folks’ home for me, at least not in the immediate future. But then ultimately, that wouldn’t be entirely up to me, would it? I mean, who wants to put up with an old codger for long, unless he’s particularly well heeled? When a person loses his ability to balance a check book, buy groceries, maintain his vehicle, and pass tests at the DMV, what options for self-direction are left if he wishes to remain independent of closest family members? Why clearly, he must check into the nearest old folks facility he can afford. In my case it would be a veterans’ home, as I said: it’s close, cost-effective, and in a lovely area of Napa Valley, just over the hills from where I now live.

My wife says that would not be necessary. We live next to our daughter and son-in-law who already help us a good deal, and as long as we have each other, no move will be necessary. If I go first, our daughter would look after my wife; her chicks will have fledged by then, in all likelihood. If she were to go before me, I’d be rather too much of a burden for our girl, I suspect, and would probably check myself into the Vet’s home.

That’s all at the bottom of Time’s slope; I’m not there yet. But what I do see ahead on the slope fails to encourage me. I see an old fellow gradually becoming removed from those around him by his increasing ailments, deafness, lack of mobility, pain and the bad temper that comes with it. 

This gradual removal of a person from his social environment is a form of alienation; it may be a precursor to death itself, the ultimate removal or final taking out of the garbage. What is left is of no earthly  use, a phenomenon that is especially true of people in the final stages of dementia and decay, where they are essentially a bag of skin and bones occupying a bed. As the world becomes increasingly crowded, I imagine society will become less fastidious in dealing with its terminally ill, hence the move towards the legalization of doctor assisted suicide. Of course for that, only the brave or desperate will apply.

Feeling removed from my environment, drifting as in a time warp, I am riding a wave  of Tramadol®, Tylenol®, and tincture of cannabis, trying to manage the pain in my back and hip. And although I couldn’t do much to change it anyway, I don’t seem to mind missing most of what goes on around me and imagine a time coming when people will speak over me as if I weren’t present at all. However, things could change. If I get some really good hearing aids from the Veteran’s Administration, they will allow me to be more nearly present than I have been. And if I can shake off much of the pain, I may return to the land of the living until the next time Morpheus is called upon to work his magic. 

                                       ***

Ole - Robyn Makaruk

He sat in a corner of the crowded room,

 a glass of tinto within reach

waiting for the dancer’s entrance.

 The guitars began the introduction to soleares,

 joined by the palmero adding palmas to the

unique twelve beat phrases.

The haunting familiarity brought back memories

of his victories in the bullring and the 

parties afterwards, guitars, singers and dancers,

 the duende lasting until sunrise.

It seemed like yesterday when

on that fateful Sunday in Spain’s oldest bullring

he led the procession,

the band playing the bullfighter’s song,

La Virgen de la Macarena .

And after he made the traditional bow

to the dignitaries and to the crowd

 was announced as El Matador de las Veces,

‘Matador of the Times’.

The bull that day was a large, roaring, cannon of strength.

The fight was long, 

and when it came time for the final short sword thrust 

he re-lived the moment as it found its mark 

giving the Brave One a swift death.

In its final gesture 

the bull fell towards him,

one of its horns ripping into his upper body.

The rustle of a gown sweeping across the stage

brought him back to the present.

Slowly, the music followed the dancer’s movements,

her heels responding first with a tremor,

a quiver, building to vibrations

that entered his body waking latent passion.

Then in a transfer of energy, of power,

he sensed her touch, one of healing.

He felt her reaching out to him, sharing his suffering,

soothing his pain.

And in that crowded room

 his tears rendered him whole, once more.

***

My Heart's Quest - Beverly Koepplin

In the light places and in the dark places

my heart searches for a kindred soul.

In the quiet times and in times of revelry

my heart seeks a path through time

looking for one of its own kind.

In between the night clouds and the sun’s rays

my heart looks for direction.

Over the ocean’s waves and the prairies’ dirts

my heart wanders in widening circles

looking for one of its own kind.

Through the valleys and over the hills

my heart rises and falls and goes on.

At dusk’s lowering and at morning’s new light

my heart keeps true to its course

looking for one of its own kind.

I can only hope that one day soon

my heart will find its way home,

for that day will bring me joy yet untold

in the greatest poems of  all times,

the day my heart finds one of its own kind.

                         ***

Street Song - Joan Brady

My name is Scum. I’m a clown – an urban clown - one of those guys who performs on street corners. Three red balls juggling way up above the gray –people going by so fast they don’t even have time to see each other – but they see me –

Black lined eyes - red triangles on white cheeks - a wig – with hair straight up.

No Barnum & Bailey here – no Bozo – no Howdy Doody – no Charlie McCarthy – no Big Top. I am the part that exists between the cracks – the part that spills out –the undercurrent. Toss a dollar in the pail – quarter’s not enough – can’t even buy you a cup of coffee. On Saturdays, I eat fire.

Where am I going? What do I wish? 

I am the solitary dance – the self-turned inside out – the dark side of the moon – the whispering voice no one else hears. I am flesh. I am blood. I am what I never was and I’m never going back to Kansas because homesick isn’t – and I never was – never was.

They didn’t hurt me – those people – parents – they said they were called parents – but they never saw me either. 

My name? When? Then? What was I called? 

I was called “Responsibility”. I was the reason they “never could”. So many ‘never coulds’. When I left – we all agreed it was the right decision.

Scum is what I am. It is my reality. It is the sound of the wind blowing through skyscraper canyons – streetcars rolling by on tracks – fire engines – foghorns – a stray dog barking at two a.m.

I sing. I dance. I juggle. I walk on my hands – and – on Saturdays – I eat fire.

                                ***

Politics - Ellie Portner

I stand, a prairie dog 

In political grasslands

Barking an alarm

To my coterie

Predators have come

They are disturbing our peace

With their

Aggression

Arrogance

Misogyny

Ugliness and deceit

I want to hide in the burrows

But safety from politicians 

Is not to be found

And there is no one

Who will protect our grasslands

 ***

Time is not Final - John Field

The purpose of time is to prevent everything

from happening at once----X.J. Kennedy

Consider the fact

that time is invisible

the color of glass of air

as if it isn’t there

until the past

catches up with the future

and the two overlap forever

because light can’t shine

through the darkness

anymore

the day we blend

into its mystery forever

reminds me

how important it is

to wake up alive

(such a precious word)

and play catch

with the rest of the day

as if it were a game

we weave into love-knots

two hearts

two blades of grass

or bounce off a wall

like a ball

on warm summer afternoons

ablaze with vistas laced in gold

but if it gets too hot

hurl what’s left of it

against a cloud

and bring down some shade

O surprising life

fed and watered

with our quiet laughter

pain and sorrow

and let that always

be enough for us

            ***

Give It a Chance- Noris Binet

For a long time I felt called to visit the exact location where Christopher Columbus arrived on my native island of the Dominican Republic, but it was only this year when I finally took the opportunity to fulfill this calling. On a visit to my family in the DR this past January some of us took a weekend to visit the out-of- the-way, northern coastal village of La Isabella, where Columbus established the first colony in the new world, having first landed on the much smaller un-inhabited island of San Salvador off the coast of Cuba.  What a satisfying visit it was, but what I discovered there is a topic for later consideration.

 Here I wish to explore why my early curiosity took so long to be fulfilled, why the pull hadn’t been stronger all these years, enough to get me to this historic locale many years earlier.

  

I came to recognize that I lived with an internal battle between my feelings of sympathy for the idealized image of the indigenous called Tainos who lived a beautiful, peaceful natural life on my island and the exploring conquistadores from Europe who wiped out their culture, not to mention the pain I felt for all the Africans who were turned into slaves and brought to the Caribbean to replace the native workforce who were dying rapidly through diseases and the torture brought by the Spaniards.

I remember the stories about the indigenous that my nanny used to tell me, how many survived the Spaniards by hiding inside enormous caves that still exist to this day. The young women, she explained, had very long hair and every day their parents brushed their hair with combs made of gold. Vividly I carried this image in my head and I wanted to meet them, my favored ancestors. As a child I kept looking for them in the bushes, hoping that maybe one day I would find an entrance to the cave, which they inhabited. 

On the other hand, for many years I denied my European heritage only wanting to embrace my native ancestors who were ripped-off of their land, submitted to a great degree of cruelty and eventually vanished from the land, or embrace my Africans forbearers who were kidnapped from their villages submitted to slavery, torn from their families, culture and heritage leaving them naked in a foreign land.

  

Making peace with this internal struggle has been a long journey. It clearly began, however, in 1992 on the five-hundredth anniversary of Columbus’ landing and all the fuss going on in my country about celebrating this historic event and a call for creating a huge monument called the Faro a Colon. This brought about an intellectual battle between the defenders of the natives and the celebrators of the significant milestone of Columbus’ discovery of the new world.

At that moment in time the long struggle within between those apparent contradictory forces began to become conscious for me. I was forced to look into my own prejudices and obviously the moral connotations of the battle between – who was good and who was bad, who was right and who was wrong.

Waking up from my identification as a particular race or ethnicity allowed me to give peace within me a chance to emerge by recognizing how each one of these races, the native Tainos, and their African replacements and the European explorers were all a part of me, they formed my mixed-race heritage.  Realizing that I would only become whole if I could embrace this dichotomy within me was the key. To embrace not only the idealized, beautiful natives and the innocent Africans but also the savage and bloody conquerors was my task.

Though warmly identifying internally with the indigenous peoples, the negative, repulsive feelings that I carried toward the “civilized” world, wherein it was (and is) acceptable to take over and destroy or dominate everything in its path, were also very strong in me. Yet I began to find within me the same arrogance that I so harshly condemned in them, for example, in the way that I had discriminated against people for their lack of education, or for being ignorant of their own prejudices. The fight that I put outside of myself and projected onto the Europeans or onto the “innocent” natives was actually happening within.

It isn’t a pleasant feeling to admit that I am both the victim and the victimizer, that both are part of the make up of what this incarnation is about: White, Black and Taino being unclear who really conquered who? Slowly I came to see the futility in denying my racial composition. I had to take responsibility for what my own ancestors had done. I couldn’t hide any longer behind the identification with only one side of my heritage, the side that I liked.  For heaven’s sake, my native tongue is Spanish, not Arawak or some African language. How could I ever think that I could get away with that one, but I managed to fool myself for a long time.  Obviously the idea behind that trick was to identify with the “good” the victimized innocents of a horrific historical massacre, but that had to come to an end if inner peace on this issue was to emerge. 

    

I was born into it: My race is the byproduct of this fierce encounter of the old world and the new, opposites only when unexamined but as I came to see, actually complementary. My race is a fusion of those three forces ancient, primitive, savage, civilized, each one containing beauty and ugliness, good and bad, each one possessing profound cultures in their own right.  I could no longer take sides! No longer could I consciously suppress and deny one aspect of my identity and highlight another without living in a constant battle. 

I recognized that to be able to give peace a chance one has to be willing to reconcile the opposites within oneself. But at that time I wasn’t sure how. This process of embracing my heritage has forced me to give a chance to the opportunity to find a place within myself where I could be fully human. I had to give up the idea that I could be perfect by being one-sided believing that I am only a reasonable, good, intelligent, coherent, compassionate, kind and generous human being. 

No human is perfect, no life is perfect, this striving to become more than human by believing that we can be perfect is the illusion that keeps us prisoners and enslaved. The humility that surfaces when one can no longer deny the aspects of oneself that are not so honorable can be the pathway to happiness, but even better than happiness the pathway to wholeness.

Giving ourselves a chance to live this life fully has for me involved keeping myself focused on bringing together the opposites within. It is challenging work and sometimes humiliating but ultimately liberating! The good image that we thought we needed to protect becomes unnecessary. Hopefully the pendulum that swings between the extreme of being only good, intelligent and worthy to the other extreme of only clumsiness, unawareness and feeling worthless begins to find a middle ground, a resting place. Every time we try to give a chance to anything, there is an opportunity to discover something new and maybe even something awesome.

                                       ***

Editor's Note: December 5, 1492 is recognized on Hispaniola as the time that it was introduced to Christopher Columbus. Europeans and immigrants from Europe, have memorialized Columbus for a discovery that he was not the first to accomplish and for "civilization" of the native North Americans. The natives do not share this opinion as many were enslaved, murdered and their culture, resources and their homeland stolen. 

                                                      ***

The Missing Word - John Field

               after a poem by Wistawa Szymborska                                                                                                                     

My short term memory is going bad,

missing in action almost as often

as lost luggage at a baggage roundabout.

When I woke up this morning

my house was exactly where it was supposed to be,

in complete agreement with the street,

and my garden was still here, too, with little flowers

blooming as in a child’s crayon drawing,

but I could not remember a single thing I did yesterday,

person I met or program I watched on the tube.

If my conscience had hands they would be clean

and intent as usual on saving the world,

but if a crime had been committed in my neighborhood

I would not have had an alibi. 

Things have come to this: I’m growing old.

                                                                                                                                              

I was always a master at forgetting my faults,

this way the dust, that way the smoke, 

but where was my mind when the kettle boiled dry

and why is my neighbor’s last name

a ship in a bottle I can’t get out?

Next year if I’m still around instead of a newspaper 

clipping it will take carbon dating

to determine exactly how old I am.

Taking Viagra at my age

would be like clinging to a life raft

after the ship’s gone down.

Using my legs as crutches

and my feet until they won’t anymore

picture me shuffling up and down hallways 

like an ambulatory museum piece

searching for the room where the answers

to whatever happens next are kept,

and when I finally arrive there 

asking myself why the word I was chasing 

took off like a dog without a master

in the middle of the night.

Find it I will if I live long enough 

filed away in my information somewhere 

like a blade of grass in an acre of lawn,

and when I do an entire Sunday

of church bells will ring.              

Until then I’ll hang fast to my chandelier

like an upside-down bat 

swinging this way and that,

to and fro, fro and back 

but not back and fro or forth and back 

while I wait for my piper 

to arrive with his magic flute, 

his drum boom boom 

and the missing word 

he’ll inscribe on the tip of my tongue.

Believe me, at my age it’s not the present

but the thought that counts.        

These days when friends ask me

if I need psychiatric help 

I assure them my dead brother, 

his three nicknames and I

are no longer on speaking terms. 

No, not those voices again—ever!

Before Winter Comes -Chapter 5 - MJ

Editor's Note:  This Lost Chapter follows Four Chapters that were published in January 2014.  They may be read by selecting January 2014 on the side panel. This one was  hidden on an obsolete computer.

CHAPTER 5

To the he old man in the deck chair at the edge of the beach, his son and grandchildren were already three black specks as they pedaled along the flat sand exposed by the ebbing tide. He couldn’t distinguish one boy from the other even with his binoculars, though his son still stood out by his larger size. In thirty minutes he expected them to round the headland on the south side of the long bay.

He felt strangely at peace after the upset and pains of farewell. His son had sobbed with abandon, and the old man had been almost as bad as they faced the reality of never seeing each other again, and of the likelihood of not even being able to communicate. Now it was over; his family was disappearing fast and he was determined to let the image of their trek along the beach burn into his brain so that he would have access to it as long as he lived.

That was not likely to be very long. He had kept the information of his terminal illness from his family lest they risk missing their ferry by staying longer with him out of sympathy. Now he had to face it alone: he was sick; his weakness was coming from within his body, most likely from his pancreas, he had decided a month ago.

Gordon put his binoculars to his face reaching out with his eyes for the last time to the three remaining members of his family, mere black figures against the almost white background of the sand. They seemed to be going seaward as they approached the headland. In a few minutes they were going over the last stretch of beach he could see; then they were gone. He put down his glasses, having nothing more to look at, and sat back to watch the play of clouds over the water.

All at once a dark speck came into view half way to the headland from where he sat, and his heart missed a beat as a rush of adrenaline burst into his blood stream. Was one of them coming back, unable to leave the old man by himself? He fervently hoped not. He picked up his glasses and trained them on the object. It appeared to be moving rapidly and purposefully, though not as smoothly as a bike would travel over that sand. He removed his glasses to see if he could judge its distance with the naked eye and concluded it was about two and a half miles away and moving at too fast a pace for a person walking.

Another ten minutes and his glasses picked out the quartering run typical of a dog whose back feet would get in the way of his front ones if they tracked directly in line. Ten minutes more and the dog was black, had a tail, and was definitely headed his way. He would welcome a new friend with open arms, dried filet of salmon, and fresh water, and only hoped it wouldn’t prove to be a Faustian bargain, a small black dog turning into Mephistopheles behind his wood stove. He needed no surprises. To be sure, he determined to scratch a large pentagram in the sand in front of his door.

When the dog got within hailing distance, the watcher recognized it to be an emaciated border collie; he called out in what he thought to be a kindly voice, but the collie kept its distance and sat down on the beach panting. The old man got up and walked into his house to fetch provisions which he placed in front of the animal then retired to his chair. Once more he relaxed and watched the catspaws race across the bay, pushing little wave front before them on the water. He reflected how many times he had watched their performance from his sailboat, judging their likely impact on his sails by the height of the wavelets they produced and by their speed across the bay. He had always marveled at the blue-black color of the sea behind the cats paws contrasted to the almost grey blue it sported in front of them.

Out of the corner of his eye Gordon observed his new companion stretch over the water bowl before him and start lapping it vigorously. His thirst apparently quenched for the time being, the dog turned to the salmon and sniffed it cautiously. Finally satisfied it wouldn’t eat him, he tasted it, then; in the blink of an eye, he had wolfed down the whole filet. Gordon hoped his removal of bones had been thorough. After his meal, the collie backed away from the man and sat observing him from twenty-five feet away. Their acquaintance was likely to be some time developing, thought his host, who knew how slow collies were to make new friends.

When night came on it brought a change in the direction and temperature of the wind, which was now off shore. The man could feel its mountainous origins, dry and cool. He thought maybe the dog would come inside later on and appreciate some shelter and warmth. He would make a fire and lay out a bed for the animal, begin the process of making friends again; it might help to fill the void in his heart.

                            ***

Coming Home - Lucille Hamilton

All the steps leading away,

the doubts and indecision,

your body knows

and is telling you,

if you would stop and listen.

All the friends who encourage

and whose words are not the solution,

which gradually emerges in the dark,

and is your work, not their obligation.

Get past gratitude for what is offered;

don't linger there for long

because you must move on,

it is your soul's heart's desire.

This is your issue.  If you want to go home,

focus on its meaning

until you are not aware 

of whether or not it is day or night,

until these things no longer matter.

Start out in a world

with no demands.

Your intention will lead you

into the decision of your moving

on your own impulsion into the journey

of coming home, 

coming through the longing, 

the awakening, the growth

that such a goal,

such a journey means.

When I am going home,

the nearer I get to it,

the more I'm not going -

I'm coming,

I'm coming home.

Somehow, coming is a warmer word

than going.

                     ***