Pointing the Way
Darrell Petska
Darrell Petska is a retired university engineering editor. His writing can be found in Third Wednesday Magazine, Verse-Virtual, Muddy River Poetry Review and widely elsewhere (conservancies.wordpress.com). Father of five and grandfather of six, he lives near Madison, Wisconsin, with his wife of more than 50 years.
Distant explosions kept me on edge all night, yet today’s onset is slow and predictable. Two
loyal patrons are first to appear: a woman and her young daughter, each clutching a book to return.
They proceed to a table supporting my entire collection—four large boxes, separately labeled Children,
Fiction, Nonfiction, and A/V. Four boxes: all that a missile in the dead of night spared from the cozy
refuge I’d long provided our town.
The girl finds an old favorite: Cinderella. She’s delighted, despite its tatters, but her mother
frowns as she flips through my books. Finally, she decides on a soiled paperback. Together they note
on my log sheet the books returning and the books leaving—one book per patron, for I have so few.
With a habitual glance toward the skies, mother and daughter return to the street’s usual perils. Hours
may pass before other patrons appear—almost always women and children.
My current home, this abandoned bakery, is neither cheerful nor comfortable, though I thank
the volunteers who provided this much. Nonetheless, I mourn each day the loss of my many treasures
burned and now sodden beneath the rubble of my old life.
Time is kind to no one during conflict, though it has provided me a daily companion: an old
woman who sits in the corner, praying her beads and repeatedly crossing herself. At every explosive
echo, she startles. Her gaze seems fixed on something far from here, perhaps a life she once knew, or
the promise of eternal life.
With so few patrons, I have little to do except watch the old woman pray. She seems to find
some comfort here, which pleases me. I have concluded I am very much like her, praying my lines
from Shakespeare and Nietzsche, Tolstoy, Lessing and Angelou, finding solace and hope in their words
even as the world seems to crumble around us.
For all its apparent insignificance, our little town is vitally important: people live here, people
who need me now more than ever. Who better to point the way toward the condition that seems always
to escape us: enlightened, humane living?
Flash Issue 18