Canoe

by Robert L Temple

The old town looked the same from a short distance. When he got close, he saw the chips and cracks. The one object that had delayed his return, the one that reminded him of the worst times in the old town … was on display in the middle of the town park, right next to the band stand; still the dark green, the elegant wood structure, the seventeen feet of select human engineering building on suggestions of the nature of the material, man letting himself be improved, nature letting itself be improved, a marriage of he skills of a person and the possiblities of the raw product to make the perfect craft.

Tears were not right. A man in the full force of his life would not stand here in the home town with its one street, two blocks of business, its three hundred homes and let tears be a silent reaction where anyone would expect words of pleasure even of joy. But none of the possible on-lookers would be aware the champion canoe had been his when he was eleven until he was fifteen. Now it was on proud display as the result of someone else having owned it, a different life, a different ownership. No one now is aware that it was his. The canoe represents for him a time he got lost in the woods, the canoe found and rescued, he returning three days later scratched and thirsty, staggering into town. No one cared enough to search for him.

–Oh, we knew you’d find your way. What was the matter, lost three days in a woods not seven miles square.

So he came back from near death to no love, no worry, not even a bland acceptance. The loneliness he lived in since that day was a persistent sadness that kept him away, that kept him from even wanting to be back where now standing in the middle of the town intersection after thirty years, who would know, what could he expect.