7392. PARAGRAPH OF LIFE

PARAGRAPH OF LIFE

October's twenty-eighth day is ending. My thoughts

try to catch up to the day, and the time, and the place. 

They cannot, because there is only far too much of

everything  -  the movement. the spreading out of time

and circumstance, and the broad-cloth of the history

just passed. There is so much more I want to do, yet,

realizing that I cannot, I don't do it. That such is a

weakness, I cannot face. The hosts of Heaven's time

and place would not hold me back - only if I had, 

once, the opportunity to go knocking, to search, 

to find. The abacus has lost its beads. The lyre is 

silent and sound-free. Yes, then, I should not be 

judged therefore by my loss and  my absence. 

It is not for trying.

-

Just today, they were taking down another building

across the highway from where I stood. In front of the

doorway,a young man was standing for a photograph,

smiling broadly and holding the pink, second, copy of

his demolition permit. Someone snapped the photo, and

the caravan of trucks came up the road. Three huge

flatbeds, each carrying something  -  a 'dozer, or a digger,

a shovel or a dumpster, a crane or a blade. Their new 

day's work was set out for them. A pity, too  -  for the old

brick and wooden doorways looked so appealing in their

tired abandonment of these last few years. Now they too 

are gone. So much is coming down. 

-

I wonder about the men who contract these things. Another

needful conceit? Another true convenience of a shed or a

store? Yet more garbage for this age of junk? I will not wait

to see what takes the place of that which has left. I'm sure to

see it soon enough anyway - a multi-colored jumble of a

happy-faced and wide doorway's subservience to something,

adequately groomed for parking and retrieval. Milk. Eggs.

And Butter. Or  -  Heaven forbid  -  much more. I wither

as I tire and pass. To die would be a lesser burden now.

-

It is hard for me to talk. The words do not flow out as they

once did, or would have; and the meanings of what I wish to

say are now less clear than ever before. The listeners too are

different : dumber, perhaps, but different as well. I once had

my own photo  -  of a lake, and its darting layout. Cottages,

and boats, chimneys, and some walls along the water's edge.

Everything in its place, and everything of wood and brick.

Grand houses and palaces of the Czars, it may as well have

been. It's all over now, everywhere I go.