The ravine was full of light today.  The houses on either side sighed and settled.  A boy ran through here like a wind today, and the summer trailed like gloaming on his heels.  The gravel path felt the imprint of his shoed feet, racing monsters back home in the dead of day.

"Hey," the ravine shouted echoes into the sleepy town.  "I am HERE," the boy cried.  And he was.

Two shadows danced together in the draping of the terrible light.  One was his, grand and dusty.  One was mine, small and looking up.  

Across the town, in mirrored room etched "Soda Fountain," he looked at the calendar on the wall.  June 6, 2012.  He looked at his wrist watch and felt his heart beat slowly, saw the second hand of the watch moving moving with no speed at all, saw the calendar frozen there with its one day seeming forever, the sun nailed to the sky with no motion toward sunset whatever.


Shadows gliding in the water that grows in the middle of the ravine, the middle of the place where standing on the edge means racing smack in the middle of fear.  With golden summer kissing our foreheads.  A blessing.  A commendation.  A mint stick in our bones.

In Memory of Ray Bradbury.


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