The way it is

I go to Saint Louis and expect everything to be better.  Nicer.  More big city-ish with a dash of urban sophistication tucked in among the parks and museums.  It's always warmer too.  Everyone knows when you go south it gets warmer.

But the air is crisp and I am looking at wood piles and a fire pit. 

There are stones lying in the grass and I go over to look at them.  They are laid out among the left over violets and verbena from summer and tucked in among the leaves of grass some poet once wrote about.

I walk between the stones, following them as they morph from simple limestone, to deep red granite, its mica and quartz sparkling out at me from behind millions of years of time.  Ancient shells cling to other fossils and some sort of brown color swirls around the flat face of a stone that probably came out of river or creek bed.

A soccer ball lies off to the side, but I by pass it, preferring to follow the path between the stones, winding round and round through this Autumn day in the sunshine and shade of several huge old trees.  Coming at last to a bench right in the center of the stones I sit down and allow my mind the freedom to roam as it will.

That is the beauty of a labyrinth.  It takes me to places I've gone many times before, but it allows me new perspectives, fresh feelings.  It's never the way it was.

After a while I stand up and cut across to the soccer ball.  Dribbling it between my aching old toes I move back towards the house.

Time to write my thots.