“We write to taste life twice…”—Anais Nin
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Stalks of the bluestem shone blood red, dark maroon like that of living left to spill and dry in a death, and so it was with the season and sign of summer’s end.
Looking on the stand of change—tan leaves in cure from the blood red stalks and heads of light haired seed in spread as turkey foot to fall and spread and further gain foothold of the prairie earth before broken settled and sown to sod of mindless manage but without roots that sustained and raised richness of earth’s depth—he thought to years before, a story written, a story lived; unforgotten, never erased—saved in an inner chamber of soul’s mansion.
All the day, an overcast held in cover of sky. At moments, sun broke through as orb of flame in surround of smoke—light’s burning through the cloud—and when work was done a rain began: slow and light and steady.
He was grateful for the rain, and also sad—the way a spirit sometimes is when it feels but cannot explain; or can but would rather not.
Home from the fields, away from the pastures and stands of blood red in stain of the wild, he sat on the porch as rain fell down; light in sound to lawn and walk and leaves of the maple dying into color as the prairie’s wild.
He went back into time. He found the story. Reading, he lived again.