The creek runs behind

my house so regardless of

my underuse and

has come to disrespect my

distress with tall leggy weeds

____

Feasting flurries come
lordless and scintillant,

picking clean

____

Scream you ever and long
from earth no reply but

echoes feel right or wrong

____



Presence and a knot --

design intimidates but 
this strand inviting
________

It gave a gurgling gasp.
 

It would be I purported to have done that … as anyone might. My ground I stood. Yes, I remember.

 

I knew in my current state that the now silent apparition did not beseech; it was only ending my life by mocking the beginning of my death. It had no more to say.

 

Well, now. Hadn't I always said, Death, when it comes, is bound to find me cooperative? The old man that I was began to affect something like a fit of the ague and at last to summon a ghastly utterance of his own, but—

 

And this, dear reader, brings us to present.



~~~~~

Noel Pratt is an editor and writer who finally had it and moved to the country. Most of his schooling has been in theology and theatre, each equally marketable. Pratt also spent time in India and lived to take a fiction-writing course at Santa Monica College.