Another day left on keeps blinking on the brain while the Goodman riff chimes. The water is cool, the fragrance of the South East breeze down the pipes, the bottle gurgles, lips wet. If and when he’s gone, will anyone wonder, take time to look, interested in words here or anywhere, or then just pack it up and stow it? No cloud, no blog post, no auditorium of souls remembering, just an obit, the eventual shoe print in gravel rain will soak away, unrecognizable. Would the cul-de-sac recall his morning shadow as he strolls one last time, cup in hand, for the wood shed half empty, half full.

The Solomon Seal buzzed in the grey light, a bee bumbling for pollen. Maybe that is all we are, or less, like bees bumbling for purposes we imagine, even less a forager than once when digits were eager to meet berries and the Cecropia caterpillar was found.

Remember what you’d miss, were it whisked away one afternoon in the lucky time sunshine, and the anamnesis of childhood plays your sepia tone twilight. Those smoke bush leaves glow in the parting sun as a kaleidoscope through limbs and leaves descending, turning those red leaves to bright amber then back to shadow, evidence of the turning world. Breath the end of May’s evening air traded with the grateful green.

His thoughts had been cynical. He told himself he was becoming misanthropic in his sense of pointlessness but his heart lifted when he saw the bunting and the cardinal. People could be such asses and he had to be crazy, too, but then, unable to tell anyone the difficulty, at least he had not expressed his frustration with Laurie. He felt that might be nobler, delay confrontation, if the disappointment didn’t take hold, especially if he didn’t know if it was he or she. There is always equal blame to go around.