Archive for January, 2012
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There’s this lady in my neighborhood. She started out pleasant enough, but I’ve since found her to be judgmental, fickle, overbearing, pushy, and loud. I’m not talking about me just yet. I’m talking about Sharon, the red headed sixty-something who chain smokes, suns her wig outdoors, and has a country twang that could hail from just about any notch on the Bible belt.
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Two years ago I convinced myself to go to an MLK open mic night full of stringy-haired boomers and aspiring hippies who read, sang, and recited their way across the creaking platform stage of a tiny coffee bar on the outskirts of Boulder, Colorado. I’m sure theirs wasn’t the only show in town, but the local paper said it was the closest. So I went. And while I could fill pages with a creative inventory of characters who passed through that night, there’s an unforgettable man who bears mentioning here: the old lay preacher. I don’t remember his name, but he looked like a shorter, frailer version of Gandalf, the gray-haired wizard from Lord of the Rings.
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The woman looked up and said: the day is a tree of low-hanging fruit, easy to pick and savor. She piled the folds of her skirt in one hand and prepared to climb with the other.
The woman looked left and said: the day is a bird in the bush, easy to tease it into my hand. She hiked her skirt higher and crouched down low.
The woman looked right and said: the day is cattle on a thousand hills, waiting for me to claim. She stood bolt straight.
The woman looked up and said: the day is an open sky, the only limit I know; I can have it all. She flung her arms wide.
The woman looked down and said: the day is a sea overflowing with fish, plenty for me and painless to take. She rolled up her sleeves.
The woman looked in and said: the day is no measure of time, for I am timeless. She breathed deeply.
The woman looked out and said: the day is a mystery I may never know. She sighed hard.
The woman looked behind her and said: the day is fading and I’m a long way off. She squinted at the path before her, buttoned her coat, and went home hungry by the last of the day’s light.
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Phoenix Rising
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This piece was supposed to be different. But this piece is what we get on account of a ghost wandered in and hijacked my story. By the time he finished with me, I forgot all about that thing I started out with. That’s exactly how it went. Almost.
Bro Druitt—also affectionately called Deacon Eddie—had a gimp leg, a club foot, and an incomparable way with words. Every Sunday he graced the front pew of our tiny southern church in his nut brown pants and broad-shouldered green jacket the color of olives, though it wasn’t what you’d call olive green. I couldn’t have been more than 9 when I knew him, if you could call my young impressions ‘knowing’ him, but I remember the Deacon, a narrow-faced, mild kind of man, a gentle stalwart in the Christian army, always seeing to it that no one went wanting for a warm smile or a solid handshake if there was anything he had to say about it.
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