The moon peeked through the trees, dappling the forest floor with little ghosts of light. The path was overgrown and littered with fallen branches, making John Pullys task both easier and harder. He was gathering kindling for a fire. He found a small clearing. Dropped the branches. Began looking for rocks. The sky was clear. And out here, far from the city, the stars were not bleached out from the glare of a thousand of lights. They gleamed. Seemed close enough to almost reach up and pluck from the sky. Millie used to say that they were the souls of her ancestors watching over her. Johnny began forming a firebreak with the rocks then snapped the branches into smaller twigs and arranged them within the break. He lit the fire. Nursed it into a healthy flame and watched the sparks float upward towards the stars. The fire crackled. Popped every so often. And danced. The spirit hears what the senses cannot ... “These are things I want to say to my grandfather,” Millie explained. Each strip had something scrawled on it. She began throwing them one by one into the fire. “The wind and smoke will carry my words to grandfather and he will know what is in my heart.” “No matter where you are,” she whispered, “even if we cant reach one another by phone or mail, our spirits will be connected … ” She tore off a strip of paper and wrote I love you, Johnny on the strip then tossed it in the fire. The smoke from the message rose in the air and a gentle breeze carried it over Johnny. “Your spirit hears what your senses cannot.” She touched his chest. “It knows. It always knows.” Johnny pulled a small notepad and pen from his shirt pocket under his jean jacket. There had been so many things he had wanted, still wanted to say to Millie, things he had written in letters that had been returned unopened. Now, there was just one thing. He scribbled it onto the paper, ripped it from the pad and threw the short message into the fire. The flames began to burn through, charring the edges, then consuming the message, transforming the words We Belong Together into smoke and lifting them towards the stars. As he watched his words rise into the night, a sense of peace came over Johnny. ~ excerpt from MIRACLE ROAD by Michael Traveler (the novel MIRACLE ROAD is the first book in the Backroads Series) featuring the photography and art of many talented artists and photographers and the lyrical prose of Michael Traveler TO READ EXCERPTS from MIRACLE ROAD OR TO GET YOUR OWN COPY, CLICK HERE ... https://facebook/TravelerOntheBackroads/app_174927749225665 special thanks to earth song
Posted on: Sat, 15 Mar 2014 17:05:01 +0000
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