right hand pointing

F .   J o h n   S h a r p

Where the Air is Filled With a Thousand Stories

You said you would take me fishing in a clear, cold stream, teach me to cast in measured arcs, make the fly dance upon the current. You said you would bring a pan and we would lunch in the sunshine, dissecting marriages, comparing failures. You said we would solve nothing but it wouldn't matter, just confessing to an open sky would lighten us.

You said that, even as you knew it would never happen, even as tightly focused radiation was outmatched, even as amorphous masses shrugged off designer poisons and you withered on crisp linens. You would say it again tomorrow, were you here.

I have borrowed your gear and started a fire which does not warm me. I peer for trout through shiny ripples, forget about the pole I left in the car. I've enough hot dogs and whiskey for a week, enough memories for an aeon. The sky takes in all the words I can send while I tell it about you, though I'm sure it already knows, and has long ago forgiven.