I slipped on my moccasins and walked to my desk where I gathered my notebook and psychology textbook. I lifted my head and stared out the window of the top-story dorm room I shared with my roommate, Chloe. It was a dreary, spring morning. Gray clouds veiled the blue sky. Rain was imminent, I was sure. “Looks like it’s going to rain,” Chloe said as she opened the door and walked in the small room. I broke my gaze from star...

Victor's first act of survival was completed out of sight of his forever family. It must have happened sometime during the year or so he had been alive. But that history was lost in the mists of time. Puppy time is mistier than people's time. In any case, he was a stray. And he had been sent to the shelter to wonder what the whole thing was about. It was in the colorful days of October when he got lucky. His Boss-to-be ha...

The wild irises are blooming in the woodlands as you follow your compass bearings while orienteering. Don't lose your way. Not today. You can do this. The day is lovely. The end of spring. Summer is soon here. Enjoy the beauty of the riparian landscape.  You've waited years for the chance. You can't let it slip away. Just do it. Getting your body into shape was hard enough for someone of your age. But you passed a prelimi...

The house stood at a high vista spot square with the cardinal points and with a clear view all around over the barbed wired fencing to pastures and other houses scattered across the landscape. The single story frame house was moved from its foundation just a short distance away as the crow flies. It had been the farm home of a working family out on a back road just a few miles south. The outside walls were covered with ta...

Standing here and knowing that we are all flawed and at times seem to be stuck with the things we aren’t proud of, along with the decisions that we have made that turn into those thoughts that torture our dreams and seem to cripple our souls. There times when I, or rather we hate being out here and it seems to be like a nightmare, and sometimes asking ourselves if God is out there and allowing those thoughts to exist and...

Every second is a life time with every minute bringing you closer to God, with nothing seen but red lights which make your body seem to burn. With a minute in the sunshine seems to translate sometimes as a decade in the dark a world away as it takes part in a dream. Still, there are times when it all remains like those finest simple threads when you feel you can’t clear your head, and somehow all is kept together with mos...

There seems to be something in the air, with most knowing it’s right and the lamp is burning low with the air being silent in the darkness held at bay by the lamp’s feeble light on this winter night. Been told I would feel nothing and I wonder how these cuts will heal and if they will leave more scars of where I have been that the sun’s dark light won’t ever heal? I know there is a light that most can’t see and it shouldn...

Standing here taking in all of what was seen, and wondering if I act accordingly will each minute count for something in all eternity? With conviction seeming to be following all the accusations made, and the crimes and misdemeanors are all clearly undefined with them still giving away time to be served of some kind. While all look around for their possibilities down by the riverside, as the leaves slowly turn brown with...

Wondering if I have a choice if I stand my ground and if my voice will be heard? Holding on to the lessons hard fought and won in the past, with only you and I standing together in the city streets where the heat can be felt. Wondering at times who is the one clever and wise, and which one is the one telling all the lies? While sometimes it never stops raining and there are times when I miss nothing, and other times when...

Sooner or later the time and the day will come that we can’t hide anymore from those things we have done, and sometimes lost is the best place to be and if they think you have no direction doesn’t mean you don’t have one. There also times when we have to leave some behind so that we can continue on, and I wonder at times if God in his wisdom will ever forgive us for those sins we have that seem to be so practiced? There h...

"Don’t look back," she said, and both of us were victims of the night, and we were also it seemed to be each other’s form of physical kryptonite, and somehow, I knew we were bound to be together. She also said to keep your eyes on mine as we took the floor in the fading dark light of the setting sun. It felt like thunder and the sound of heavy guns in my chest when she looked at me, and in her eyes, I seemed to see the fu...

Shadows are beginning to fall, and I have been sitting here all day, and it all has me wonderin’ if the faithful be rewarded or will they be passed by and end up in the pitching queues for the gallows yelling and singing praise for the hallowed? Still, though there is nothing really left to fear voices can be heard at times, and has me wondering if it is from someone I have let down in some way or have just left behind. C...

Closing these tired eyes of mine and feeling my mind slip back to the days when I seemed to come up with fire in my eyes when promises were broken, and the seasons passed by like the shadows of clouds passed across the face of the mountains. Once it seemed enough to see the sun in the winter when standing out in the sand hills, back when it seemed as if everything mattered and had some sort of importance. Instead of seein...

All around me are the views of familiar faces that seem to be going nowhere, and has me recalling the familiar places I left behind as tears seem to be a way to fill their glasses as they sit in the Old Man’s Bars and wait for the day they die the slow death they have chosen. Looking right through most of them and being very easy to file them in a convenient drawer much like an old library card catalogue. Now it seems as...

Standing here in the courtyard and leaning against the wall wondering why I have been directed to be here at this moment, and instead I know I should be heading out and keep on keeping on down the line. I know that there is one out there who will haunt me along with those secret souvenirs shared, and those are some of the thoughts that keep me warm at night along with the symmetry and shadows that make up the picture I ca...