Image: Unsplash, downloaded (https://unsplash.com/photos/sosPE5SkA4s) 09.07.2023.
A Place Between Somewhere and Nowhere
The decomposing hours of a dark
night in a cemetery hold an old man
captive in an unreality, leaving him with
a sense of wistfulness. He anxiously
searches for metaphors to smother the
meaning of the lonely frogs as they
croak into the strange emptiness of the
moonless night. He senses that he is now
just a gray mist taking flight through the
vagueness of his memories. He lives in a
time of decaying hours, just waiting for
someone to empty his thoughts into a
reflection. What shall more months
bring, as nights, dark and bleak, spreads
death’s lethal vacuum, causing him to
smother in panting gasps? The lonely
warbling of night birds, intermingling
with the strange sounds of the wind,
sends the old man’s mind to a place
between somewhere and nowhere where
memories fly in and out of graves, where
a tombstone with his name etched on the
face awaits him.
About the Author: James, a retired professor, and octogenarian, is a twice Best of Net nominee and four-time Pushcart nominee. He has had five poetry books, “The Silent Pond,” “Ancient Rhythms,” “LIGHT, ” “Solace Between the Lines,” and Serenity, over 1770 poems, five novels, and thirty-five short stories published in scores of national and international magazines, anthologies, and books. He earned his doctorate from BYU, and his BS and MA from California State Polytechnic University, SLO. He lives in Santa Ynez, California, with his wife Sandy, and a dog named Scout.
