On Books

“If you cannot read all your books… fondle them – peer into them, let them fall open where they will, read from the first sentence that arrests the eye, set them back on the shelves with your own hands, arrange them on your own plan so that you at least know where they are. Let them be your friends; let them, at any rate, be your acquaintances.”

Winston S. Churchill

I am Human

I am human
With all the imperfections that implies
Sometimes I forget to floss
Or leave the bed unmade
And sometimes I am selfish

I can make poor choices
Or leave tears behind me
Be stubborn or greedy or both
And sulk like a petulant child

I can touch your hand for no reason
Sink deep within your smile
I can recall your scent when I am far away
I am human

The Hole

Frank stared at the hole. He didn’t trust holes. Holes were where something used to be, and it might come back.

Then what? Then your hole’s gone! See? Can’t trust a hole.

He kept staring though. It was his job for now. Official hole-starer, as it were. He slowly shifted his weight from one foot to the other. Then front to back. Small movements that kept the blood flowing to his weary feet, but didn’t disrupt his steady study of the hole. It was vital, he’d been told, that any change in the hole were noted and reported as soon as it happened.

“Just stand there and watch that there hole,” he’d been told. He snorted at the memory and recalled something his father had told him years before: “Never trust a sentence with just in it”. That and holes. Both were untrustworthy in Frank’s view.

A slight breeze blew up and disturbed the grass around the hole, but the hole itself remained. Frank shivered involuntarily as the first exploratory rain drops found their way down his neck.

A mother and her brood shuffled past. “Bloody council workers! One down the hole and the rest just to watch!” she muttered as she passed.