Toast

Dear friends, charge your glasses and join me if you please.

"Far we may wander,

and wide we may roam.

Yet friends we shall always remain,

and I, for one, will call that home."

+ One

Today the lens is widened in appreciation of those most base daily building blocks; the irreplaceable, albeit generically anointed, ‘they’.

            They are everywhere, and they are quite well known.

            They are an integral participant to each new day.

            They are waiting at the traffic light. They are in line at the grocer’s. They share both the chairlift ride and the refreshing beverage after.

            They enjoy fishing, frisbee, and ice cream. They are all about pets. They make time to write, mountain bike, paint, and laugh. They care for the environment and volunteer often. They are passionate about climbing, gardening, river trips, local libraries, and live music. They recognize the sacred.

            They love their families and cherish their friends.

            They work hard.

            In a world increasingly set to fast-forward they deserve respect. They, after all, are just like us. In fact, more than that, they are us and in that light they are home.

Early Days

Chorus: Mama and a'Papa made a little baby, Mama and 'Papa made a little baby.  Little baby getta wailin', drive a'Mama Papa crazy.

Vrs.1: Gotta teeny-tiny house, lil'birdies flock outside. If ol'doggie getta barkin, little birdies fly n'hide.

(Chorus)

Vrs.2: Mama got the maté, Papa got the desk n'pen. When little baby getta wailin' both a'gonna lend their hands. Why?

Chorus: 'Cause Mama and a'Papa made a little baby. It's true. Mama and a'Papa made a little baby, named 'er Lu. Mama and a'Papa made a little baby, and it's you.

Majitomia

Her steps were light down the ladder to the dock, a single delicate hand brushing atop the railing. 

Oppressive heat from an egg-yoke sun allied with the ladder's sharp degree failed to stoop her fine form and she alighted to landfall with practiced ease.

Back straight, shoulders square, she coolly surveyed the distant treeline's tropical sway. A gentle breeze tickled past, toying with the tips to a full-bodied swirl of rich, soil black hair.

Absentminded fingers tucked the wind-dancing strands behind one softly rounded ear and turning then, the high light fell upon her in profile. A chin, cupped like a flower's petal, gave rise to high cheekbones and mischievous lips; small, yet pertly full and upturned at their ends. A button nose set the centerpoint as well as accentuated that larger-than-life dark mass, but the true force radiated wave-like from the eyes. 

As rich as they were soundless, those orbs were delicious darkness; twin droplets deeply stirred by a desirable yet never reachable source. 

Five and one-half feet of pure sweet lightning rod, she made ready to electrify the island.

Sir Francis Bacon

The Author leans back in his chair.

Through the deskside window he surveys the drooping boughs of a great forest-turned-winter wonderland, senses its silence deepening in pace with the falling snow. Lost so to enchantment, words not the Author's own spring to mind:

"Begin doing what you wish to do now. We are not living in eternity. We have only this moment, sparkling like a star in our hand--and melting like a snowflake." 

Not urgent, but aware, the Author turns from the window. If, like snowflake, this moment is to melt then post its crystalline passing will remain one page more.

Tiny Bubbles

Rather than by resolution he rings in the New Year via the guilty course of confession.

With tongue in cheek he admits to his annual indulgence of that most headaching-producing bottom-shelf libation, Martini Asti. What began as a skint student's joking bond with the only champagne label he could afford has grown to a lifetime's purposeful selection.

What has spurred his dedication to that honey-hued sugar water, you ask? The simple pleasure of unforgettable nights barely remembered.

Soon, time will demonstrate that, indeed, it does march on, yet his is an equal demonstration that not all things change.

Hail to Thee

A naturalist, some say a heretic, and certainly a sea-faring vagabond pen pioneer, Charles Darwin challenged world perspective through the written word when, on Thursday, November 24th, 1859 he published The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or The Preservation of Favored Races in the Struggle for Life.    

Should that, somewhere, a Beagle wait at dock for us all...

Foundations Likely to Shake

Should I call her, I wonder.

I haven't for a few days, but when you're alone in a strange place and used to someone's company, you can't help but think on what they might be doing, that, and dwell on things.

I'm only seventeen. What do I really know about love?

Worse than the question is the resulting realization that I'm reluctant to follow either my heart or my head for fear that neither know what they're talking about.

Personal passage, dated: 22-5-1998

Connecting Dots

Though confoundingly difficult to identify there is, to the discerning eye, a person amidst the color.

An individual, vibrant in the extreme, awaits just beyond plain sight. They glow with sunshine youth.

And the ceaseless breeze that runs like current through their life is fantastic though it comes at the expense of rendering them all the more difficult to sight.

Chase them. You may one day even brush their hand. But do not risk to cling too tight.

For sunshine and wind are not meant to be held but enjoyed for they are flashes of light upon life.

              The rust hinged saloon doors groaned. The barmaid turned at the familiar sound and saw him saunter across the threshold. Back lit by the night’s bright moon he was, at first, little more than a slender, long-limbed silhouette against the door’s stunted frame. He lingered in the doorway’s splay of ethereal light. One silent moment stretched to two. With practiced nonchalance the barmaid lit a cigarette and studied the neon pulse of the jukebox, unhurriedly waiting for the lonesome shadow to take form.

               The stranger's light steps echoed across the wood plank floor. The cavalier paces seemed unencumbered by direction or purpose. Yet his upright posture and contrived gate failed to wholly conceal the hunch of his squared shoulders and weariness knotted there.

                His skin wore its youth well but a weathering like worn wood clung to the contours of his lean face. It whispered hint of a hidden old soul. He came to careful rest beside an empty stool at the bar’s far end where it seemed he might take roost. But he did not sit. Instead his wire frame leaned atop the polished surface, weight fixed upon a neatly folded elbow. Propped so, he turned to gaze toward the direction of his entry as if mulling whether or not it was too late to turn back.

                The barmaid reserved any words of greeting until assured the drifter would remain. Her deliberate approach was both silent and cool, allowing the Pall Mall’s smoldering waft to announce her presence. Opposite the bar’s width, his angular chin hoisted proudly at the deciphered communique. Slowly, his tussle-haired head swiveled to regard her.

                 Face to face, she was confronted by the swirling fog of his boyish charm. Confidently enshrouded thus, he wasted no effort to mask the narcissism lodged amidst his knowingly pleasant features. Yet it was his eyes that dominated the introduction. Their blue was as bright as it was bottomless; the hue of a cloudless summer sky.

                Both the cigarette dangling from her cracked lips and the day’s long-trailing years grew heavier under his stare. Her dry skin sagged under the sudden, seemingly spiteful, addition of weight. “Poison? She spat.

                By the dim light she sensed more than saw the predatory smile. Too late she realized the ruse of his seeming resignation, and her imagination flared to illuminate what her eyes failed to detect from the dark: twin rows of crocodile teeth that gleamed a moonlit sheen.