Author: David M. Rubin

I'm a philosopher and writer living in New England. I enjoy musing over the complexities of human nature, imagining their possibilities, and discovering hope in the darkest of circumstances.

Rendezvous

I had no reason for being there so late, not a legitimate one. The school day had ended two hours earlier, and the hallways were cleared by now, not even one student dragging his or her feet. Bus #253 – the late bus – was already gone, and so I was on my own. Home was close, but too far to walk.

Miss Dupre – my French teacher – spotted me in the corridor after locking her office door. She’d already driven me home countless times in previous weeks, and I was positioning myself for yet another late day ride with her.

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The return

The dreaming writer and his muse enter the garden, leaving their fig leaves at the gate. Now alone and denuded of all manner of covering, they are happier beyond belief, for there are no longer the obstacles of shame and separation, nor the judgments of others. There is only the writer with his imagined muse, dwelling and playing within God’s heavenly garden, where every tangible need is provided for.

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Dad’s cloud

The local townsfolk call it Old Albert’s Place, located on the north side of the crater, near the bunkers, a few miles off of Route 18. “Can’t miss it,” they tell me with raised eyebrows. “Just follow the dirt road to the end. It is still passable, despite the winter rains last year. Watch out for the potholes and radioactive stuff. Good luck, mister!”

And so I walk…

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Men without muses

Aging memories and youthful desires in perpetual flux, expanding and shrinking to the calls of unknown voices – sometimes friends and sometimes foes, directing and misdirecting, TELLING but never SHOWING. The trickster, STILL slithering around the proverbial garden, spouting the same old lies, leaving a trail of dead poets waiting to be reborn: Agonizing trinities of father, child, and vacated lovers.

SHE remains elusive, incommunicado, camouflaged among prickly underbrush and apparitions of yesteryear; taken hostage by the thieves of muses and destroyers of gray bearded men with orphaned writers. HER fiery womb appearing far-off in the distance, bubbling up in the heat of bone-dry pavement: ILLUSION set ablaze by the desert of shame.

© 2020 David M. Rubin. All rights reserved.