Travels with Charley
I have seen the morning come up slow over a tin roof and a gravel road, and I have heard the milk truck rattle like an old promise keeping time.
People say the world is made of iron and worry, but I have held a cup of spring water and felt the oath between hydrogen and oxygen whisper its small, eternal yes.
There is honey in the way a child laughs, and salt in the way an old man sighs. Both belong. Both are needed. Both tell the truth in different tongues.
I have watched a woman hang laundry like she was stitching the sky back together, and I have seen a man sweep a porch as if clearing a path for hope.
Give me these things — the plain, the worn, the working hands — for they are the ones who keep the world steady while the rest of us dream.
September 