croftinnz

Part I - Paradise The evening for Abel was one to remember; the air cool and soft, like a blanket of frozen eiderdown that you could wrap yourself in; some unseen painter had taken his brush to the land and had used the sky as his canvas, coloring it with dazzling shades of dusk. Blue mixed with pink that danced with gold as the sun sank beneath the horizon over a still, mirror-like lake. Its half orb became a full circle in the crystal-clear waters below. Yes, Abel thought as he rocked backwards upon a dry, comfortable log, gazing at the world with glistening eyes. This is an evening to remember. But one of many in Paradise. He was not alo

The Silent Samaritan I am a child. I am thrust through the metropolis, dragged through avenues of concrete giants that loom higher than the cloud - than the smog. But it is night, and in the sickly-yellow glow of the streetlights my father holds my skinny, dirty wrist in his hand. The flesh is calloused, dry as sandpaper, like something reptilian. Those fingers coil around my skin as surely as any snake. All I can hear is the pounding of blood in my ears and the flopping sounds my spoiled shoes make on the pavement as we weave our way through the indifferent throng. I am dressed too lightly for the weather - I cannot help but shiver, even

Arboreal For My Father I write this record not for the sake of horticulture; botanists and gardeners may well already know the things I am about to relate. I care more about my own sensibilities and feelings in this epoch of my life - but if others should read, and relate, and find an expression in these words for things they have known themselves but never uttered, I should not feel too bad. I speak of my own garden, and the gaping hole in its domain which has caused me to compose this memoir. To relate the meaning of this hollow, it is necessary to go back to the start when all I had to my name was an expanse of bare soil. Every man begi

When I was hatched, my parents took me from my cradle of broken eggshell, wrapped my tiny, fragile body in a satyr-hair blanket, and let my scraggy red wings dangle weakly. When I was three, I could reach the top of the kitchen table without use of a chair, and could walk from one side of the city to the other with my dad without feeling tired. My legs had grown stronger, but overhead all the others flew, and I longed to join them. My scales grew shinier with age and health. I was six when I took my first flight, diving with great courage from our roof and soaring over the neighboring two gardens, early for my age. Out next-door neighbors two