sun swaggers out. I follow the birdsong along the rail-fence avenue, alone, skirting the flood. All of yesterday I was haunted by quarter-century old ghosts, ’till I heard a song on the radio that lifted me out of the mire, a song from those same days. What I thought I wanted never happened, but it’s dumb to pine for something I never knew. And I met other singers, heard other songs. The memory of those encounters should be sweeter than all imagined futures unexplored or barred to me. Step on, no turning back against this planet’s space-flung spin and the paths and turns it gifts you.
