Deck with a View

A Deck With A View:

Heron's Perch

I watched it glide in

From across the lake

Silent stable flight

Then landing

Upon a pontoon perch

Like a tightrope walker

Part trapeze artist,

And zen master

Poised precariously

Between the elements

Air, water, land.

In a moment

I was immersed

In silent revery

This icon of tranquility.

Then, without warning

It lept into the lake

Splashing

Took flight again

Entering a strafing pattern

Inches above the water

Towards marshes on a distant shore.

Perhaps hunger drove it

Though in twilight

It prefers to hunt

In solitude it teaches

Patience, and awareness

Of a present now

In which there is no past or future.

And in a last glimpse of flight

I felt a calming breeze

Knowing I learned a lesson

From the master

Who sits aware

Of my life

With its elements

Of joy, sorrow, and despair

Telling  me not to worry

That life is but a transition

From one plain to another

That solitude is profound

Togetherness a gift

Awareness a silent pleasure

Only the seeking have found

Upon a heron's perch.

D.A. Wittler 6/30/18

Atwood Lake Indiana

Coming of Age as A Writer

Into the Long Night

An excerpt from:

The Rolltop Chronicles

(An unfinished novel)

By D.A. Wittler

I want to share with you a journey that began many years ago in my head. It is a tale of a young man who began to realize his view of the world was slightly skewed. It took the promptings, sufferings, and persistence of his senior year in high school for him to see himself in a new light as a writer, and not just a shy kid with no future ahead, and his father's legacy behind. And so the story begins in another time, another place, and in the mind of someone else…

Into the Long night she drove. Bitterness biting at her nose beneath a woolen scarf. Steam rising from a restless breath heaving from inside her. And then there was the driving snow accumulating in drifts along a deserted stretch of country road. “There would be no plows for hours, or even days along this forgotten thouroughfare” she thought, as there were mainly summer homes, and hidden cottages enveloped in an adirondike like forest in upstate New York..

“I have forgotten summer” she mused as her soul flung itself along an uncertain path of self loathing, and dread in a storm unrelenting. The old house would bring some comfort from the cold, but it could not replace the sense of loss clinging to her like intricate designs on a bay window; dark, and silent. Finally there appeared a light, and way home.

She thought to herself “Within this refuge I will find myself lost in memory of trivial things, and wayward sons on divergent trails of hope, and despair, and there is nothing more I can do but pray for their salvation. If there is a happily ever after in each life they aspire to, then what more can a sister, or a father do but hope?”

Once Upon A Dream

A few thoughts:
 I went to sleep, and dreamt a tangled life where there were ornate bird houses hung within it's branches. I heard a sermon being preached, and a good book lying open to so many blind pages falling to the floor. I saw unfettered spaces, and people walking different paces along a path of overgrown weeds, and I wondered why a life of faith must be so complicated when the birds know perfectly well how to fly without these chains of worry, work, and fear that keep us hidden beneath the shadows of a brilliant life of sun, and moon, and a billion beckoning stars  that beg us to see beyond the falling sky. "To life!" I cried; in spite of the ringing in my ears, and the desperation of simply breathing.

D.A. Wittler 6/8/18