"How quickly you forget to be kind", said the garden snail, "In the time it takes to remove my gaze you have replaced kindness with self pity."

a silent prayer moves
across a green field
as creatures bow
to an ancient voice

some on wings
at the speed of light,
some earthbound
slowly measuring time,
perfecting their
unique dance

All of a sudden, Dustbunny remembered Angela. She was someone he had known many years past, it must have been a song on the radio. He remembered her long, thin, pale arms. He wondered if she was still alive? Probably not. He remembered her brown eyes and it made him sad that he supplied her the poison that removed their luster. He was sad for a bit, then he made a resolution to do something kind before the day was done.

Dustbunny practiced walking back and forth in his small one room cottage. The room was a bit too small to full stretch out his steps and Dustbunny found himself too preoccupied with reaching the opposite wall, but this was the only place he could rehearse his gait. He concentrated on his weak right leg, trying hard to make it look similar to to his healthy left leg rather than dragging behind and stiffly swinging too far out when taking a step. He also discovered while looking into his full length mirror that by leaving his right arm close to his side and his right hand in his vest pocket, it helped to conceal their withered appearance.

For the first time in a very long time, Terry was actually cooking, not just throwing together the mandatory, semi-edible mass of least resistance.

"Tarragon. Do I even have any tarragon?" he thought as his saucepan began to show signs of boiling. Fumbling through his mostly abandoned spice rack, he found a pinch of flakes left in the bottom of an old spice container. The flakes had retained sufficient potency to fill the kitchen with a distinctive, not quite licorice aroma when sprinkled into the simmering brew. Terry was not sure if tarragon was his favorite or least favorite spice, but good and evil often lay together well in a saucepan.

"Listen for the true rhythm beneath all things," said the garden snail, "at times it is as profound as first love, other times as subtle as a passing thought."

Joe was driving down the road, with no particular place to go when he spotted Rayfield, an old friend and workmate, walking on the side of the road. Joe pulled over. Rayfield paused for a moment trying to figure out what this white guy might want. He recognized Joe's car, then the driver, and got in the passenger side. Joe drove a bit, then pulled over. They caught up, relived past hijinks, shared this and that. Rayfield told Joe that he had taken a construction job after he had been fired from their mutual employer. It was grunt work, but the pay was better than that of a dishwasher. 

After talking for awhile, Rayfield became more quiet and pensive. Looking straight ahead he asked, "You remember the fight we had?"

Rayfield did remember. It was a sad memory. A memory of a fight, caused primarily from the inequality of their job positions.

"Well," said Rayfield, still staring straight out toward the road, "that wasn't nothing but a thang."

'today, while we worked the fields
bombs fell gracefully from the sky
changing the ground from earth to fire.

gramma paused her harvest
to shake her fist and
curse the iron raptors'

'just the other day,
a farmer raised heavenward
as he stepped on a mine.
he walked a short length
before resigning to his fate'

'these are the memories of my childhood
as we played in the wreckage of war,
as death rose from the ground
and fell from the sky'

- compiled from the voice and poetry of an old friend

why does the sky weep so?

maybe if i buy some seeds from my new catalog,

go out and plunge cold, numb hands
into the damp soil

press an ear to the still earth
and listen for a faint beat

maybe I can wish
the sun back into the sky