The Umbrella

The knocking is steady, insistent, like the beating of a heart. Honey, I call, can you get that? Then I remember. I go to the door. No one’s there. An umbrella’s propped against the jamb. It’s a nice morning, bees drowsing in the azaleas, the sky cloudless. I don’t own an umbrella. I’ve not felt the need. I’ve always been willing to run through drops. Get a little wet. A lot wet. I open the umbrella. It doesn’t even cover my head. It’s a black flower with a single petal. A dead flame on its wick. A doily on a stick. Someone’s idea of a joke. A gust snatches it from my hand. A kid’s watching from the sidewalk. He points and laughs. What’s so funny, I say. He grows up before my eyes. We watch the umbrella disappear in the sky.

Flash In The Pan

The boy in the photograph looks so serious he might be a miniature Civil War soldier brought to attention in the parlor of his home. He suffers from the unfamiliar touch of collar and comb. The details want widening. An antimacassar defends the brow of a wing chair from his resting arm. A lace doily floats like a lily on the marble surface of the end table. A door is cracked an inch behind the boy’s head -- a thick book shelved backward. He looks up and a little left, as one does when searching for the answer to a question. Who is he? Why, our common ancestor, the future. Far off (not so far), cannon fire can be heard.