Lane's Diamond

Chapter 2 - Catching Up


Lane walked beside Karla as they left the hardware store and turned up a path woven with tree roots and weed clumps as familiar as the pattern in an old hallway rug. Their arms brushed one another’s until finally, Lane blurted out, “Old Putty Face quit working at the gas station.”
“Why? Something happen to him?” Karla frowned.
“Don’t know for sure. Someone said he had another stroke and his face went from bad to worse. My mom said he couldn’t use his arm very well anymore.”
“It’s so sad,” Karla sighed.
“Maybe he just couldn’t deal with Tim and Nate’s
teasing anymore,” Lane whacked at a bush. “Or, maybe he’s dead.”
“Lane! Why’d you say that?” Karla stopped.
“I don’t know,” Lane suddenly felt awkward. ”Let’s just change the subject.”
Karla glanced ahead and swatted at a bug, “You brought it up!”
Lane wiped the sweat from her upper lip as they walked on and looked over at her friend. Lane could see, in that moment, all the unfolding beauty Darren saw when he had eyed Karla earlier. Her exotic face had smooth skin, and her full alluring mouth, boys always seemed to like, whether they knew why or not.
“So, what’s up with you and Darren?” Karla asked brightly, “You’re hangin’ out with him I see.” It was as if Karla knew her thoughts.
“Awe no. Not true. I just bumped into him in the hardware store.”
“So, you haven’t hooked up with him other than that?” Karla swept her hair off her neck.
“No, not really. I mean I’ve seen him around and we say ‘hi.’” Lane answered, feeling somehow very childish.
“Lane! You’ve got to come on to him a little. Otherwise...”
“...how will he know?” Lane finished, crossing her eyes.
“Well, not just that. Some girl will come along and do it for you! Definitely when school starts,” Karla added as matter-of-factly as a newscaster.
Lane slowed then nodded in agreement, “What do you think of Darren now?”
“What do you mean?” Karla slowed down too. “Do I think he’s cute now? Well, more than a year ago.”
“Definitely,” Lane smiled. “Do you think he has any idea that I really, you know...”
“Like him?” Karla glanced her way. “No, I think he’s totally clueless.”
“I’m so off his radar,” Lane laughed.
She began to swing the toilet plunger, the bag flying off on the fourth arc. She dropped back, crouched, and swung the plunger hard, like a bat this time. Karla ran ahead to catch the phantom ball, which made Lane run as if she had connected with the same ball. She tagged a parked car and then a tree, creating her own softball diamond.
Karla yelled, “It’s a double, folks!” They both grinned.
“Remember when you did that for real, and drove in two runs for our win against Taft?” Lane smiled as she caught up with Karla.
“Duh! I doubt if I could do it now. I’m totally rusty.”
“That’s why you need to practice right away. We have
only two games until playoffs,” Lane pulled her tank top away from her damp midriff. “We slumped after you left.”
“I’m going to try. Not promising anything,” Karla wagged her finger.
They turned into Lane’s front walkway lined with blue, pink, and mauve hydrangea, but it was the smell of fresh cut fruit that they noticed as Lane opened the door.
“I smell pineapple or something. Yum.” Karla dabbed her forehead.

-HMorrell

More Please

Oh the ways of civility,
the kind gesture, the extended hand.
Your gaze reveals a thoughtful mind,
passions wrestled, teams spirited,
lessons learned, no black and whites.
We share only education,
but of that, we can rhyme forever!


Oh the degrees of earnestness,
that shameless caring, fraternity,
the extended hand;
it’s gradually wizened by fear
and electronica,
by the satiric media, the crass and snide masses.
They run defensive line,
for the Corporate Larvae that trammel
and eat on the dying corpus of good sense,
fortitude and compromise, -that earnest civility...

The body of what was once ‘America, the beautiful’,
is now ‘America, the fat, ignorant and whorish’.




- HMorrell

Steering One's Struggle

5/29/10


As we live our younger lives, instinctually learning, faithfully studying, preparing; plans and strategies seem to make sense. A robust social hunger, pliant mind, elastic body sets the table for supper to feed your soul, whatever you conceive that to be.
However, moving forth in age, the invincible self erodes, and aspirations fade. We learn uninvited lessons, hopefully gaining grace and kindness to some degree. Over our years, events occur, battles are lost or won, but are always paid for. Sadness and disappointment absorb the hunger, those plans evaporate, and that tattered bravado recedes. People young and old die. Small catastrophes claim you.
You humbly learn the chapters where not only is life not fair, but it is teeming with deceit, agony and fraud. So you cloak yourself in a fabric woven with existence riddles. You push through laughter, and cautious celebration. Joy remains but is tempered with gradual surrender to those changes you cannot actuate.
Next you set your brave boat to coordinates of resilience and rudder to coves of compassion, family harbors; taking on friends, dogs, supplies that please and comfort you.
You control not the winds, nor the tides, not anything -but your own boat! Yet the sun is out there too, the fish and birds, prayers, and stars to guide you.

-HMorrell

A pitch...

Dear Readers, here is a pitch for my tween book, "Lane's Diamond". Please read it and let me know if you would be interested in reading such a book for you, your sister, daughter, cousins, whatever. A couple excerpts, from the manuscript are on the blog below.


--A best friend’s betrayal, battling the rigors of a new middle school, a boyish body, Lane’s self-discovery is all uphill it seems. Not to mention her father’s heart problem and that ache left by the departure of her older sister. What’s a young lady to do? Talk to herself that’s what! What social standards?
LANE’S DIAMOND is about 18,000 words, told with self-mocking humor expressed by 'thinking out loud'. Lane is a girl who demonstrates a talent for observation and emotional reckoning that makes her a kid other kids would want to know. And another thing,softball is in her blood.

c HBMorrell

Counselor

I saw her today, her eyes like raisins
and let her delving verbal tongs
lift and measure my mad nest for awhile.
My voice rolled out like a bad cartoon,
not matching my lemonade rimmed lips
at all.

Afterward, I structure a
public countenance again
on the breezeway outside,
but there is no breeze.
Social standards seem to
negate singular worth.

At home, the kolanchoe looks
so muscular and pretty.
Its green scalloped fleshy leaves present
the orange splendor of it’s tiny blooms,
all pelvised in terra cotta.

And how the sun encouraged,
it’s wet soil to
push up weedy new shoots next to it,
that spoke to me.

First Rain In Six Months

Parrying through the particulate air
rain drops finally smack onto smoggy leaves,
soot filled asphalt, splatter on
roofs crusted with dust and pollen
pelting cement that shatters the drops
a thousand times again.


Alley ways creased with ancient urine
and sticky dried bin seepage
receive their shower with a stink.
Endless roadways moisten, fill,
their gaining waters
mixing and running with lurid oils
gyrating on their surfaces.


And on the hills, parched beds,
and rock ravines,
rivulets begin, join arms, becoming streams
to anoint the arid basin once again.
Twigs soften, stones move, bark swells
and birds find feasts everywhere.
Even coyote and cougar somehow know
their prey will be rounder soon.

Rinsing the canyons and landscapes,
the clouds with their rain,
the perfect tilt of the earth,
have all done their work.

Go with Her



Old man,
his twisted toes in old boots
steps to his front door,
the frame bucks each time he forgets
to drop the chain.

His mortgage is satisfied
but the house is empty.
His slow blue sedan and he
have an understanding
that saves both their lives.

But he misses her cooking still,
the steaming kitchen in winter.

He rakes the maple leaves now
without being there with them,
telling their treasury of
summer stories,
tendering crimson and russet comfort,
a minuet of circular faith.

But he sees not
the delicate cellulous prints
diffuse on the sullen dark earth.
He lost his crimson,
bleached from his heart
like the paint on his barn
when she grew thin.

He lost love;

opens his mail,
shifts the grate on the furnace
and reaches in half arcs
to gather lost strands
that now seem to honor
no new beginnings.