As she neared the bonfire, she could see that the individual, who was casting such a large shadow when silhouetted against the fire, was in reality, a thin, but muscular man with shoulder length hair. He was wearing a faded black t-shirt with the initials for New York City printed boldly on the front in big block letters. The castle he was building was even more magical than she could have imagined when she viewed it from a distance. It had large thick walls, surrounded by a deep moat and numerous towers. He had hollowed out a little room inside the tallest tower and had placed a small tea candle inside, so that the room glowed with an orange light from within.
Now, all this time, she was quite certain that he was completely unaware of her presence, until quite unexpectedly, the man, who now had his back to her asked, “Would you like to help?”
Surprised, that he was somehow aware of her presence, she stepped out from the darkness and replied, “What can I do?”
“Well, the main gate still needs a drawbridge and I think that small piece of wood under your right foot would fit perfectly.”
She looked down and said, “I’m sorry sir, but there is only sand under my feet.”
“Ahh, yes,” he answered without looking up from the rampart upon which he was putting the final touches, “but what lies beneath that sand?”
Wiggling her toes in the sand under her feet, she was delighted to discover a small weathered rectangular plank, which she could tell at first glance would fit perfectly into the main gate leading across the moat. Picking it up, she ran over and handed it to the gentleman, a smile beaming from her face. Returning her smile, he took the small plank and placed it across the moat leading to the front gate.
Together, they stepped back to look at the now completed castle. The man noticed that parts of the wall had been dried out slightly by the heat from the fire, and sitting down, started to scoop handfuls of water from the moat to re-moisten the sand before it crumbled. The child, quickly joined him and within moments they had repaired all the damage.
As the unlikely pair sat back, they gazed in satisfaction at their creation now back-lit by the bonfire and enchanted by the sparks that seemed to hesitate over it, as if in homage, as they flew by on their way to the sea.
“Do you live near here?” the child inquired of her newfound friend.
“No, I actually live quite far away, but I come to the ocean shores as often as possible,” he replied.
“Why?”
“Well, I want to visit all the places on earth, which of course is impossible, especially for a person with limited financial resources. But a friend I once had, told me that when you touch the ocean, you touch the entire world. For the oceans touch the entire earth. Every continent, every island, large and small, every inlet and peninsula and through all the rivers and streams that empty into these oceans, they also reach deep into the largest bodies of land.” The man then picked up a handful of water and reaching out placed it in the hand of the child. “Imagine how many drops are in just this small handful of water. Now, only a short while ago, one of those drops was on the shore of the Baltic Sea, and that one was in the Sea of Japan and the one next to it came from atop the Andes Mountains, down the Maranon and Amazon Rivers, across Peru and Brazil, until it reached the Atlantic Ocean.”
“And right there,” he said pointing to a corner of her hand, “is one of my favorites, for it has taken the longest journey. It originally came from the eyes of the Egyptian Queen, Cleopatra, as she held her child from Julius Caesar and realized that she would never see the great Roman leader again. It fell from her eye, down her cheek and into the Nile where it passed the Temples of Memphis and Luxor, the Pyramids of Giza and the ever-patient gaze of the Great Sphinx before entering the Mediterranean. From there, it visited the harbors of Alexandria, Athens and Rome before slipping through the Straits of Gibraltar, where it continued its journey for over two millennium, before it ended up here, in your hands.”
“Really?” she asked.
“What do you think?” he countered.
“It might be,” she replied hopefully.
“I think so too.”
For a moment, the child pondered all these new and wondrous facts that had just been revealed to her about that single drop of water, and then, she very carefully, reverently, placed that handful of water back into the tip of the next wave that washed up at their feet and said, “This way someone else might hold it one day. Your friend must have been a very smart man.”
“He was.”
“How did you meet him?”
“That, my young friend, is a long story.”
“I love stories,” she eagerly replied.
“Well, it began many years ago.”
“How long?” she queried.
“Before you were even born.”
“Wow!” she said, her forehead wrinkled in contemplation, “That is a long time. Were you kids together?”
“No, my earliest memory of his life was when he was a newly commissioned army lieutenant, on 42nd Street in New York City, on the night that he first met the young lady he would marry.”
“Is 42nd Street a park?” she asked in all earnestness.
The question was so unexpected, that it momentarily threw the gentleman off. He tried to gather his thoughts as to how he could describe to a child, the Times Square area of New York City, at a time when it was known as “Hell’s Kitchen,” an area where the lost souls, drug addicts, winos, criminals and the other unwanted offspring of humanity, had created a little, surrealistic, neon lit, Oz. A sanctuary for the hopeless and the hunted, right in the middle of the greatest city on earth, and how it was in this environment, the last place his friend ever would have predicted, that the Lieutenant first saw and fell in love with his future wife.
In the beginning, he struggled to put together the words, but eventually he found them flowing easier and easier about the moment the couple’s eyes first met from a distance. They were walking towards each other, the Lieutenant from the Port Authority on 42nd Street and Eighth Avenue and she from the library on 42nd Street and Fifth Avenue. How in the early evening, on that crowded street, they both looked away with embarrassment, yet they both slowed their pace. How when they were only twenty feet apart, even the drug dealers and street walkers could see that the soldier so badly wanted to introduce himself to this beautiful young lady, but how could he on this criminally infested street? But then she stopped and pretended to look in a store window and he did the same as they glanced at each other’s reflections in the glass. When she finally turned and started to walk again, he realized that if he missed this opportunity he would regret it for the rest of his life. So, just as she was about to pass him by, he introduced himself and she instantly returned the gesture. After some small talk, they agreed to meet the next afternoon for lunch. She wrote down the phone number of his hotel and then she continued on her way home. After watching her disappear into the crowd, the Lieutenant started back towards his hotel. Now, unbeknownst to my friend, a drug dealer who had been watching the entire scene from across the street walked up to him and said, ‘Man, what is your problem soldier? I thought you were never going to ask her out!’
‘Excuse me?’ The Lieutenant asked.
‘I was watching you two, from the minute I saw that girl’s eyes meet yours and a blind man could tell you were meant to be together. But it was near torture waiting for you to say something. For a minute I was nearly convinced you were going to let that piece of magic slip right out of your life, but in the end you came through.’
‘What exactly did you think you saw?’ The Lieutenant countered, in a slightly bemused voice.
“On this street, my kingdom, my world, I see everything,” the dealer replied. “I saw you, I saw her, I saw what could be and I saw sparks!”
Sparks
(Drug Dealer)
LINES
OF A TALE
CUT IN THE FACE OF A CROWD
SENTENCED NO BAIL
THERE
IN THE NIGHT
DEEP IN THE BACK
THROUGH THE BLACK
BECKONS A LIFE
TIME
MOVING IN A STRAIGHT LINE
BUT THEN AT A WHIM
A CHANGE IN THE WIND
A STORY BEGINS IN ITS MIND
FOR DEEP IN HER EYES
BENEATH THE LIES
OF THE DARK
LEAVING MARKS
SPARKS
SHE
HAS BEEN STEELED
STANDING THERE LOOKING SO TIGHT
TAUT AND HIGH-HEELED
ONE
OF A KIND
THE KIND OF A GIRL
THAT ONLY A DREAM
COULD DESIGN
TIME
SEEN THROUGH GLASSES OF WINE
NEVER REVEALS
THE WHY OR THE WHEN
HOW THIS STORY WILL END
AS YOU FIND
THAT DEEP IN HER EYES
BENEATH THE LIES
OF THE DARK
LEAVING MARKS
SPARKS
COME ON
CONJURE UP A REASON FOR LIVING
TAKE ME ROUND
AND AROUND
AND AROUND
AND AROUND
AND AGAIN
COME ON
DO IT IN THE NAME OF LIVING
FOR IF NOT TONIGHT
TELL ME WHEN
FOR IF NOT TONIGHT
TELL ME WHEN
AHHHHH
HEARTS
CAN CONFUSE
THAT MESSED UP BUNDLE OF NERVES
THAT TENDS TO BRUISE
STILL
LAY IT BARE
IT’S BETTER TO BLEED THAN TO NEED
AND NEVER HAVE DARED
CHANCE
A MOVE BASED ON A GLANCE
A MOVE BASED ON NO MORE THAN FEEL
IN THIS UNREAL CIRCUMSTANCE
FOR DEEP IN HER EYES
BENEATH THE LIES OF THE DARK
LEAVING MARKS
SPARKS
