“THIS EVER EXPANDING RIPPLE OF NOW”

Curiously he walked the now darkening streets, entering into the strangeness of the moment. Inside the homes that lined the cold brick pavers, tungsten filaments leapt into life, dimly illuminating the landscape about him. There, standing outside of the scene that played before him: he peered through the looking glass and saw something he simply could no longer recall?  A lover’s embrace perhaps he thought, but no it was more this. Try as he might though, it eluded him. At the age of fifty he’d become anomalous by nature. A statue he thought, whom life molded and fit, only to undo the next day: for this and this alone he shared with his fellow man, death.

Raising the collar of his coat he receded into its warmth and walked on in the shadows of homes where children playing and a mother’s laughter seemed a foreign sound indeed…







Tomorrow is the illusion that time can bring solace to this moment in which we find ourselves perpetually enshrined. A moment that expands in an ever widening ripple: much like when a stone is dropped into the still waters. Always at the center of this moment am I. It is I who endure the pangs and sorrows of the coming day. Bloodied and finally to rest upon the jagged rocks that line the periphery of my knowing. Always the daylight brings with it, the danger of the despair. Draped about my shoulders I sometime fear its swollen mass might one day grind me back into the dust and I be spread on a rising wind…







I once heard a voice piece the darkness about me. A still small voice called to me in the night and looking down I saw bird Angelo. Kneeling upon the cold stone I saw his small frame illuminated in the light of the open door. Excited, I found a box and lined it with fresh grass and leaf and welcomed bird Angelo into my home. Here at last life had penetrated my stark existence and within his soft chirps were an affirmation given to me that I belonged to this world and that I was loved. I watched in rapt awe as he drank his water and spoke of the great things he’d seen in his small bird tongue. He said he could stay but a moment but this I chose not to hear. I lit a candle and as the flame flickered about, I listened and rested in the knowledge I was not alone in life any longer…







Embedded in tomorrow is the illusion, that we may find solace in this ever expanding ripple of now.

I awoke and saw bird Angelo would no longer chirp his happy tune. Shouldering my despair anew, I looked at the now still body of my feathered friend. Knowing his end had come we went into the yard together and I placed him into the earth where we must all, one day return. There I stood, as an old fighter, whose swollen hands and bleeding knuckles belied the truth that I might one day again be the contender of my youth. There upon the broken shards of my understanding I could feel my toes become as dust under the ever increasing cloud. Silently, I wished my friend well, though in my heart I knew his end had come and his ripple had been stilled. For death is no respecter of friends and in his cold embrace-he would make all things equal...