This is the second installation of posting excerpts from several books I have written. We will be posting new excerpts on-going. I would love to say monthly, but who really knows. What I do know is that these are remarkable stories that you would really enjoy.

Please feel free to leave your comments below. I would love to hear them.

---

Chapter 1: THE YEAR 1917

Surely, we knew it couldn’t last but hope, oh my God yes! We talked of love forever, how long is that a lifetime, a year, a month, a day an hour, a moment a kiss?

You see for me, I believed it!

How silly I am. Love doesn’t last forever, even if it is chiseled in stone. Water, winds, sands, shadows, the weather all erode it, like a diorama it becomes a blank staring thing. But am I being too harsh this seamless hope of love? You, you return to your tattooed French princess, me to my scullery tasks, my glass slipper cast aside like a poem on the forest’s ferny floor. From a distance I dance, twist in pain as the drying process begins. I am keening cursing at little woman crawling in the face of despair, what was will it never be again?

We kissed each other consoled one another felt with our hands, this is how we met. But what is that? Before the wind blue sky when the orchard was in blossom, our orchard, when the beach steamed at low tide, spring sun we did love each other then. Before I met you, I weeded the garden, planted drifts of purple fragrant violets cut driftwood for the steam bath, where were you? But why ask, for your lips were there, and you have kissed me now, well now it is still raining, what kinds of rain? Since your last letter I wander the woodlands calling your name into the night, owls and small furry creatures hear me. The frogs listen to my impassioned voice; stop their song, all is quiet, then they begin again. First one makes a tentative rasping clicking sound, then two, then one from over on the other side of the pond, our pond, then all join in. Their song of joy and nature brings me tears once more, I think of you, and wonder what does one fill lost love with? It hurts when I think it can’t possibly hurt anymore, I hear the evening robin song; it’s descending crescendo, and my heart is broken once again.

Love is not seamless, lost love is blades of glass. Color them discordant.

“Give it up”, I say to myself and yet, a rooster crows and waves on the beach murmur words to me, your words, and your voice and just as I see you hold out your hand to me you disappear. In the darkness you laugh, I can hear you but can’t see you. I am over here saying your voice on the beach, and I run to the sound, and you are not there. Here I am I run there; you are not there either you have moved once more.

A seal breaks water on calm nights out in the cove and breathes out. It is so close I feel as I am awakened from my restless sleep, wondering that it is perhaps you, standing beside our bed.
This must be love as I listen for your voice, do you still love me? I know this is not rational. You are far away yet maybe you have come home and have not told me, perhaps to surprise me. You will think that I am mad. Perhaps I am, mad with longing mad with desire. Maybe at the bottom of my shards of love I am just deranged with the rampaging emotions stampeding and trampling my soul

The entire book will be available as a “print-on-demand” book soon.