Stepping out through the door of his house, which was swollen by the moisture and did not shut properly, casting off his shoes to thrust his feet in the uneven grass, which, dead and alive, was a chorus of mute tones, browns and reds and greens, casting off his sleepiness with a shudder as he stepped beneath and then out from beneath the newly leafed deciduous trees into the sunshine, casting off his shirt, casting off his boredom, turning, arms outspread breathing in, out, casting off his ambitions, casting off his intelligence, casting off death, casting off his ideas like the clothing he cast off until he was nude, falling in faith and not knowing that he had ever fallen before like that on his back in the grass, casting off his language and his memory and his poetry, he was as mutely eloquent as a lion basking and blinking in the mid-day sun.
[Stepping Out appeared in Vine Leaves Literary Journal Issue #11]
David Hammond 