"Pluck"

A different point of view from a different source.

   He stood at the precipice of his life. This was both metaphorically and literally. Bob was at his turning point.

    He couldn’t ask for a better day. The sun was playing games with the wind and the clouds were shaped like bunnies, chasing each other across a perfect sky. With the sun to his back and a breeze tickling his very veins, Bob looked backward through the seasons of his long life. He trembled at the thought of what was next. His imagination ran wild with colors and situations.

    Bob was given a gift of sorts. He could look out across actual time. He could see those who had bravely and maybe not so bravely gone before him. Taken that last step.

    If he knew anything it was his family tree. This great family shared similar traits. Sure, there were some nuts and even a few squirrels. Every family tree had them but one thing this particular family had was “Pluck”. Okay, maybe he wasn’t sure about every branch of the family but he knew his for sure.

    Bob wasn’t afraid, even though he trembled some. It was only the delicious Autumn breeze. He looked down again. His precarious perch was such that it allotted him a view that many had before him but none should have after. Bob sadly understood he was the last of his kind on this branch of his family.

    It came again. That feeling. That urge for the unknown.

    Bob looked into the now burnt orange sunset one last time. He never looked down again. He was a savage for a split second and his famous “Pluck” took him on into the next life as he gripped the wind and glided into his future, catching one last glimpse of a dieing Autumn sun.

    Somewhere in Northern California a little boy stared out of his second floor bedroom window instead of doing his homework. His feet, dangling from an old oak chair, were swinging to a rhythm only he could hear and his imagination, that would one day make him famous, was running wild. He had seen the cloud bunnies earlier and now, by chance, the little boy watched as the last leaf on the Liquidambar tree fell gracefully into his backyard.