Sweet Victory

It’s never too late to find love. I had a dog once, rebooted from a home that Apparently had no toys. When we got her, we offered up a buffet of balls, bones and other expensive forms of molded rubber and plastic. She ignored them all, disinterested to find even a moment of bliss - in any one of them. She lived this way for quite some time Seemingly okay with a life without material - affection. One day, she came across a cloth mouse Long since discarded by the cat who now favored - killing the real thing. In a single moment, she became something we’d never seen before. Bringing it everywhere playfully pawing and chewing it, taking it to bed searching for it when she entered a room ignoring her food if it wasn’t beside her and unable to focus on anything else. I’d never seen her happier, or stupider. It only took me a short while to stop enjoying her bliss and start worrying what she’d do when - she lost this. Would she return to her previous mode of gent

Were he alive, my father would not have been on Facebook. He lived in three dimensions, not two. He guzzled cheap beer when he was healthy and sipped blackberry brandy when he wasn't. He cut firewood in the late fall, sometimes with an axe sometimes with a chainsaw but always with snot dripping from his nose. I stacked the wood, going from annoyance to indignation until I finally came out the other end With pride. I held flashlights while he skinned his knuckles On everything. Late evening he'd watch the ballgame with a beer. I'd trace the veins on his hands, smell the Old Spice on his face and the bubbles in his glass. The wounds on his hands seemed so fresh but not once Not ever did I ever hear him Complain and never Not ever did I see him -flinch.

We come, young, old, etc. Those observing must wonder  What common trauma unites, bonds Brings us all together  - for this. First day check-ins, eager grins Mostly some Wondering what the hell they'd gotten Into. For some it takes hours for others Days but a week for all is  Plenty good to feel a sense of  Something you haven't  - before. We sweat, we cry, we bleed one Drop at a time confirming, affirming that What makes this perfect is nothing - more Than our own imperfections. An observer might say oh: Sweat, tears, blood - it's salt that Brings you all here but they'd be dead Wrong because it's the opposite of - that. It's the sweetness, the sugar the old Folks called it, that thing that robs Vision, limbs and even years from Our clutches. But not here. Here, we run we ride we jump we climb Higher and further away, away from Doctors from doubt from anything that says - No. Here, we laugh at our failures, here we Ponder possibilities consider new Realities and