In the beginning

When days last lost bloom once more

(Inspired by Bob Burden)

We see our days passing by…

One by one - Boxcars on the railway…

I pause, on my trip to destiny, to view a scene. … I wander, as a drifter through my old

Hometown, along the paths of orange crackled leaves, on to my house… the old

familiar haunt.

In the house, people move about, but they are not alive. They are the walking dead, the

ghosts of my memories.

Soon they‘ll be gone. Faint whispers in the air

A gust of wind picks up the ash and bones and rolls them down the old alleyways.

The smell of cinnamon and roasted almonds lingers somewhere not far away.

Too many memories, a tear rolls down my cheek and into the cracks of the pavement.

The Creek. Once so large and expansive in my imagination, now nothing more than a

trickling stream and clouds of bothersome mosquitoes… this is where I injured the UPS

driver.

Why do you come here John?

No one is left… Not anymore…

All of this was good. It was all good before the night of youth faded into the dusky hills.

I will leave this place now and I will never return. …Not in a million years…

     I will not cry for my life, but maybe somebody will… Cry, baby, cry. Cry for all its

worth. … … Bawl your eyes out Kiddo’

1995