Clarks Lake

           

                                            Clarks Lake

            As I lay alone at night, I cannot help but wish I were somewhere more familiar.  Somewhere, that no matter what time has changed still seems relatively untouched.  So as I lay there, in my room I think back; past the heartache, and past the love.  Past the cold on the pale green sheets.  Beyond the light radiating up the stairs and into my hallway.  I am taken back to a place in my youth, a place with a beautiful tranquility.
           
            Lying there, my mind begins to wander.  The realness of the world around me fades into a perfect darkness.  While asleep I am awoke by a rustling in the brush.  Is this me, a younger version on the man I have become thought the years.  Looking around I can see, this is a place I know, Clarks Lake in Satartia Mississippi.  My father used to bring me here to hunt game when I was just a child.  However, this cannot be me.  Although the feeling of the grit on my face and under my fingernails tells me otherwise.  So I just accept this, and allow myself to soak it all in.  Because perfect moments do not come very often.  Because perfect moments fade away.

          So sitting there beneath the enormous oak tree, among the various birch, and other large trees of the hardwood family.  I look around at sights.  The leaves are turning color, due to the season.  In the distance is the loud crash of a high-powered rifle.  The sound is synonymous with the cry of a young Indian brave bagging his first buffalo.  The powerful sound of the rile fades into the distance just to be followed by the sound of hurrying birds flying from the treetops, in unison.  Then all is calm.  All that can be heard is the slow rush of the wind.  A clean dry air untouched by the horrors of smog of air pollution found in the worlds larger cities.  When you breathe the air, it rushes into your veins, and seems to clean your soul.

          Sitting there in the tranquility again.  The beautiful silence is up heaved.  This time overthrown by the sound of dogs.  These are no housedogs.  The sound is mighty and proud.  As if they were from a true stock of canine blood, and highly trained in their hunting art.  The howling grows closer and more frantic.  The once calm underbrush rattled by the emergence of a mighty peer, and the excited pack behind him.  Out of the thick underbrush, but only for a minute, the buck emerges,  then he is gone.  So far, ahead of the dogs he was that the pack trots by me, noses to the ground.  Still only worried about there find, and off they go into the deep wood.
 
          It is tranquil once again and the excitement of sound has drifted away.  As am I drifting, drifting to sleep.  Away from this place, I love.  Away from the comfort of a wonderful place; a lost childhood.  Back into my room.  My own lonely bed, and back to the horrible reality of life.


DRAVEN