An Author is Born

  The Library Sunset with Sweet William

The crackle of a turned page
someone clearing their throat
thoughts zipping
in and out of sections
skidding across tables
zapping from computer terminals
the perfume of knowledge
surrounded him
crisp and clean
with an edge of dusty history
everything hushed and polished

From the window
he could see the mountain
like he could walk there
some spring to the place of Manzanita
its red-barked graceful trunk
and yellow Scotch Broom
abandoned down the hillside
falling over boulders painted
red and black with graffiti

now covered with winter snow

turned pink from the setting sun

As he left the library
those beloved doors closed
and the cement steps
the clock tower
even the sidewalk
were stained mauve
as violet windows watched
the end of day

The high craggy peaks
of cement and concrete
steal and glass
at this moment captured
the rosy glowing countenance
of the sky

He saw buildings instead of trees
but there was that same
reverent hush around him
that he had felt in the library
the same upturned rapture

It was raining the night Sweet William was born.  The steady drops tapped on the overturned aluminum boat outside my bedroom window, while I was safe and warm in my bed in a small city in Los Angeles County.  I stayed awake wondering how William was coping with so much rain, writing his answers into my dreams.  He was one person made by my imagination into every man.  I wrote his story because my heart told me that I needed to. He lived in my computer and in the hearts of friends that I shared his life with.  As his life changed, I became a better person.  Everyone I shared his life with, loved him and through him, me.

I painted his dark curly hair and his blue eyes and I felt his pain.  I also felt his triumph when the wonderful publisher, Buddhapuss Ink LLC, read his story that had become my story, and liked it.  My good friend, Mariam Kobras, inspired me when she told me how she had signed with them and published her first book, Distant Shore.  What did I have to lose? I have gained so much because I have this itch to write and if I don’t scratch it with words I think I might explode.   

“You are an author now,” Mariam tells me.  Yes, I am.

http://buddhapussink.blogspot.com/2012/04/buddhapuss-ink-llc-announces-first.html