The Destination...

  The day had grown long, and the shadows that lay upon the ground had grown long with it. One reaching into the other, until the somber, covering coat of twilight was upon the land. In the distance, beyond the fields filled with corn that slowly rustled in the gentle wind that played within them, the glow of lights twinkled on the highway as cars and trucks scurried on, each one going somewhere in a rush. Perhaps towards home, but just as likely to somewhere else, who knew, other than those to whom the lights belonged?
  An old house stood forlorn, forgotten at the end of a bent lane. From the front of it a porch blossomed out, the paint on its columns peeling with age. On it there sat an old man in a rocker that creaked and groaned as he slowly pushed it back and forth. The rocker creaked against the rough wood of the porch, wood worn bare from the years, from the weather. The old man shifted a bit, leaned back, settled into the chair once more and watched the glow in the night.
In an absent minded way he felt the gentle breeze that blew in the cornfield, felt it pass on its journey across the land, but he showed no sign, no,  his mind was elsewhere, looking toward the tomorrow that never seemed to come. Life it seemed had passed him by, or perhaps it had only seemed that it had. Perhaps what he was looking forward to in that tomorrow that never seemed to come, was something he had misplaced along the way, something that once lost would never be found again.
  So many years had gone by, the destination which in his youth seemed so far away and which existed in his minds eye as a place that was serene, filled with fluffy, white clouds that moved gently across a blue sky. A place where the grass grew green and tall, where it gently waved in the kiss of a passing breeze. Yes, then, in those long ago years, he could picture it, could feel the welcome in the air and know that someday he would find it... But in the here and now, these many years later. Years that had hardened him, numbed him. Yes, here and now, in the glow of the setting sun, in his rocker on the porch, with the gentle breeze playing about he knew that the end was not what he had once thought it was, just as his life had not been what it should have been...
  The days of his youth for the most part had been carefree, days when the sun shined, or the rain fell, and the snow in it season had blown across the land. Hot, heavy days of summer spent with childhood friends, playing what then were imagined to be grown up games, or days just spent talking of what was to be, or was then. But, childhood had passed, not soon enough then, but now he knew it had been to soon, and he longed to return to then.
  What he saw now, there at the end, was not what he hoped, or thought it would be through all those years. No, now it was something unfocused, something to be feared, perhaps because it was unknown, perhaps because it seemed to be so close now. He really did not know. He only knew that these days he was tired, life had worn him down, the constant unending battles that seemed to make up each day, the worry, the thoughts of what had been lost in the years that had past... He found that the morning sun no longer brought him the cheer of a new borne day that it once had, no longer did he look forward to each sunrise with new hope, and an unconquered heart. No, to many battles in life had been fought, and to many had been lost. Now, each new day was not greeted, no, it was just another day, one more mark on the wall, and at its end, as the last fingers of its light disappeared below the far horizon, a few more steps closer to the destination...