MAKING CHOICES

In 2006, my writing won 2^nd place in 2 categories in the contest at the Wired Monk Bistro, in Murrayville, Langley, B.C., Canada.   “Tread Softly” won for Poetry, and my short-short “Haunted” won for Non-fiction.  I thought each of them had something to say about the choices we make in life.

TREAD SOFTLY

Tread softly through your thoughts

Your garden of tomorrow

Trample not with heavy Soul

The seeds you will to blossom forth

The tiny thoughts that need your care

In one small seed of thought

Each morning grows

Have mercy not upon the weeds

The tangled web inside your mind

A ravenous horde

That would destroy

Each tender trace

Of living grace

That reaches for the light

Be sure to guide and water

Your garden as it grows

A thought-full garden

Takes time to harvest, too

And then, alas, your thoughts bear fruit

The harvest of your life

Each fruit akin to long forgotten seed

So did you plant a rose

Or harvest you the weed?

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By Lisa A. Hatton

HAUNTED

               The memory of her haunts me as glaring proof that I am a coward.  I will never see her again so I cannot even ask her to forgive me.

         I did not seek her out, and I don’t think she deliberately sought me either.  Our passing in the rain that cold November day was only an encounter born of circumstance.

         My circumstance was a hurried drive-thru lunch at a fast food restaurant between my medical appointment and a visit to my mother in her nursing home.  As I drove out of the parking lot, she stepped in front of my car and raised her hand to stop me.

         Of course I stopped and rolled down my window.  She stood beside my car, finding it hard to look at me or to use her voice.  She stood alone in the cold rain, no hat, long dark hair plastered to her head.  She wore a long skirt, and boots.  Her hip length jacket only had the top two buttons done up above her protruding belly.  She could have been anywhere from twenty-five to thirty-five years old.

         Gathering her courage, she looked at me from desolate eyes and asked if I had any money to spare.  “I’m six months pregnant and I haven’t eaten in three days,” she said.

         I moved as if to reach for my purse but remembered I only had a twenty dollar bill left.  If I’d had a five, or even a ten, I would have given it to her.  But not a twenty.  What if she only wanted it for drugs?

         As the car behind me honked to prod me forward, I told her I didn’t have any money for her.  The dejection in her eyes made me think I had pronounced a death sentence.  As she turned and walked away, I knew for certain she had told me one truth.  She was most assuredly six months pregnant.

         Driving away, her desolation became my own.  I could have afforded twenty dollars, but I had become the uncaring and judgmental person I myself reviled years ago when I was a single mother on welfare.

         Now each November, when the cold and the rain return, I will always be haunted by her memory.

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By Lisa A. Hatton