The Night’s Last
I’m alone here, and though I want you to come with me, I’m alone. The smoke pours out of my cigarette as headlights from night’s travelers pass by. The crickets are playing in the distance, and though they only know one note, it is a beautiful one. From up here I feel safe. It makes me wonder how my thoughts would be different if I were at street level, close enough to the ground to hear it breath. I am safe up here, yes, I am safe. The wet lavender blows through my window in orchestrated breaths. It’s scent, newborn from an evening shower. If only water would bring that innocence back to me. If only. Sleep.
“It took me years to understand that words are often as important as experience, because words make experience last”
—Willie Morris
(via npr)
Refer to life as “The Contest”
Children are skipping school today, and fathers call in sick.
We fill up with cracker jacks and cold six packs and the players add a column to their backs
We don’t think about the curse or how much the fall has hurt because, today we are in first place
father and son sit side by side finally with something to say winter is gone, it had been to long alas, tis opening day
— John Murray
With the life given to us, we are obligated to seek out those things that move us…those things that spark a desire. We can not and must not sit boyishly on the fence waiting for them to come, waiting for someone to show us how. As men, and women alike, it is in us to hunt. We have been blessed with the instinct to survive…to nurture if you will, to find some sort of peace. Those that are angry, are those unwilling to do good for themselves. However, they may not know how. Maybe they’ve never been taught what this means. That the only thing that we truly own is that which is in ourselves…which starts as a flicker and becomes a flame. It is beautiful. It is rich. It is the single most valuable asset a man can have. There is nothing greater than this. This feeling of growth…of becoming. So find things…things that move you. And with all your might, your anger, your whatever….move them back. Push them beyond repair, beyond what they say is “normal” and make others look at you differently. Make them wonder.
