Every two weeks the old man nestles his cane into the crook of his purple and green filbert tree. He carefully slips through the suckers to the center of the tree to reach the most clean a tidy leaves. He leans against the same branch removes his pen from his plaid shirt pocket and begins to scrawl upon the leaf. Pay to the order of lifestyle in the amount of everything in my account. He wiggles out of the center of the tree slowly, achedly climbs the porch steps passing the adirondack chair he never sits in. He finds an envelope slips the leaf inside and addresses it to Life Spent Working. He licks three old stamps and crunches the gravel of the worn path to place the payment in his old mailbox. On the way back to his ageing home he glares at the tree remembering the day he planted it hoping to play in the shade with his children but he was too busy working. Slowly up the steps he stops to glare at the adirondack chair he purchased to sit on the porch with his grandchildren and read. His grandchildren are far away with their parents who work hard everyday to provide for them the same lifestyle they had.
“Caw Caw Caw” he hears from the filbert tree he thinks he hears the crow say, “your life is no good for me. I live in the wild and eat when I can. I have nothing to loose, all the time I want and no lifestyle to scrawl on leaves to mail off to the man.”
“Caw Caw Caw” The angered old man enters the house takes up his 22 and shoots the old crow dead.

11/08/2011