Where are the words that once teemed so fierce, to strive and break against my lips? Where are the words that thrumming burst from inked fingers to thrive, gleefully, desperately, purposely upon white parchment?

I think they have been subdued into silence, chained by reality and a forlorn weariness. It's a meager fire that once remembers thoughts of golden glory. Can we be two at once, you and I both mentor and student, both learning and leading, both past and future. 

Where is the present? I am tired. But not beaten. I remember whispers, and I remember you. 

He pulled up quickly through the scattered rain, wheels crunching over faded white parking lines. Without turning off his engine he quickly ducked out of the car, shoulders hunched against the biting cold. There, standing oblivious, or perhaps uncaring in the harsh headlights that still flared from the running car an old man stood, back bowed beneath his dirty windbreaker. Worn flannel met a pair of weathered jeans and when the man running through the rain called his attention the old man turned, mouth agape in the beginnings of a surprised smile.

Flustered, the running man from the running car waved a handful of dollars in the air and held it out. "Here...I found some money for you."

His voice trailed off as the weathered old man almost unconsciously took the money, surprise in his eyes. The running man stammered "God bless...good luck.." and with an uncertain smile, quickly turned around to get back in his car and pull out of the faded parking spot.

As he backed out, he surreptitiously glanced in front at the old man who stood there, still staring forward uncomprehendingly before slowly blinking down at the wrinkled dollars he held in one hand.

The running man watched in his rear-view mirror as he drove away, watched as the old man covered his mouth with his open hand and stood head bowed in the rain. The car drove away, and in the far distance as it turned a corner the old man in the old windbreaker and old flannel still stood there, hand over mouth, head bowed down. His other hand clutched 4 dollars.

The man who was no longer running wish he had asked his name. We who have so much.

In my soul there sits a cup of coffee, poured over ice, sweetly bitter and velvet on the tongue. It sometimes mistakes itself for a glass of wine, always red. Somewhere there is a book, of course. Bound with leather and the scent of nostalgia, filled with alluring secrets and far horizons,  it often thinks itself a beautiful woman. Cascading midnight hair carried by beautiful poise and prose, promises of far discoveries and secret gardens all eagerly pulling me into a reverie of introspection. Adventure, plunged in swash-buckle rises in every nook: the yearning hunger for, not the triumph of. Veiled forests of Sherwood compete with forgotten isles of Monte Cristo.

It lies in that beckoning horizon just over the next bend, one more shared sunset, one more rising storm, one more far-eyed sunrise away.