Pondering By Keith Pearson

I was sitting on the porch at dusk, the faded boards silver in the last light, thinking about Ecclesiastes, and an old friend gone a few years now.  The book covers some hard country that everyone passes through, where wind covers the ground and rivers run their course. Where plans made by man get blown away like footsteps in the dust.

 

My friend used to laugh at such talk, said folks spent too much of life trying to outsmart time. I can still hear that laugh some evenings, especially when the sunset is fading into unnamed colors and the wind is out of the west in a faint breeze.

 

Ecclesiastes isn't a place to go for comfort. Maybe that's why I like it, the same reason I make this place home. There's not much comfort found out here. Life here stands tough, boots in the dust, telling hard truths. There's a time for every thing under heaven. Seasons arrive and seasons leave. There's no bargaining, and no appeal.

 

I have learned over my time here how the dead travel along with you. They show themselves here in different ways. A gesture. A word. In the way a gathering storm sends a warning chill along the spine.

 

The sun goes down and leaves only a promise it will rise. I take comfort in that. Out here we keep things simple.

 

They put her in ground where she never wanted to be. I take the blame for that. I was the only one that knew, and I forgot until it was too late.  They chose a bright green patch of fake grass fenced in by tidy rules. Her ashes rode there in a cardboard box decorated with paper roses. I could hear the wind calling her from the far off canyons she loved. The people standing over her meant well in their grief. Meaning well doesn't get you far out here. Handfuls of dirt fell softly. My eyes were somewhere beyond the cemetery, to the west. Across the hard plains to the mountains beyond

Across the seasons where she travels beside me.

keith pearson was born and raised in new hampshire and works at a local high school in the math department.