Acts of Kindness I have to admit It was kind of strange for me to be hunched at the edge of the lawn like that… On a Wednesday morning After a Tuesday night-before In a neighbourhood where every sunrise-after lulls the Land of Suburbanites Into their becalmed state Of being. Of wakefulness. It should not have surprised me when a Good Samaritan approached His footsteps cause for alarm! I mean, what could I say? “Just a minor heart attack. The merest constriction of the chest A barely measurable acceleration of pulse… No need for an ambulance.” What other excuse could I invent that wouldn’t besmirch my reputation? Why else would I be staring into the dirt, beneath the parted blades of grass As if I could see something down there, couched in layers of smothering soil waiting to be discovered by archeology Even through the final act… The ceaseless progress of decomposition. “You okay?” he said Summoning me to the brink… To my moment of truth… I could not tell a lie… could I? Couldn’t make up something that would make sense of my peculiarities. “Just watching a worm,” I said. “Burrowing into the earth…” “Found him on the sidewalk…” “They always do that when it rains…” He looked at me as if I might have been another species… Or the long-lost member of an extinct tribe. “Feast for the robins.” he might have hinted. And who was I to argue? Playing at God, Absolving myself of the inevitable sins we’re committed to By being alive? CraigSpenceWriter.ca