Avid Readers Staring into Glory at 1600 Central; myself

They rest atop a smoothly weathered rock with intials carved in its face from a time long since quietly forsaken where amidst the dying leaves they bask in a chasm of words between better left unsaid as it’s nourished by the tacit bond of the experience the two share and the sun recedes in jaded capitulation behind the foothills to the sunken west. Before I can indulge an internal inkling of misanthropic malice with which to cast aspersions she reaches her rays as if to lay a calming hand o’er my heart.  
   
   
I  
start away, sauntering  
without aim. Soon I’ swallowed,    
immersed in the  
totality of long  
shadows  
east through    
towering Tennessee    
Pines. Sure  
enough, the    
cold mountain wind  
re-inters those—  
darker  
elements to the    
black    
dirt of my  
heart.