The Cycle

 

I pedaled along through the park enjoying the fresh, crisp air nodding to pedestrians as I passed. Suddenly I heard the ungainly slapping of feet behind me as if someone were trying to overtake me on foot. The noise grew louder as I went along, until I looked in my mirror to see my tracker and was shocked at the apparition that pursued me. It had the frame of a man with long gangly bony hands and the face of a skeleton! He wore a long black robe with a enveloping black hood. The robe extended down to his feet and flowed behind him as he tried in vain to overtake me. He possessed a long black wooden stick with some sort of a gleaming, razor sharp, curved blade on the end. With all the news of rampant crime and all the unpunished crimes in the papers, I pedaled faster to lose him. The faster I pedaled, the faster he ran, when I realized that he was The Grim Reaper and he had come to harvest me! With this new revelation I headed straight for the main clock in the center of town and skidding to a stop at the towers feet I vaulted up the tower stairs and climbed out to the face of the clock to stop it in its tracks. Gripping the huge hands with all my might I tried to stop the clocks mechanism and reverse its direction. I had no success and the sharp edges of its appendages cut into my skin and I began to bleed. By now he had arrived and was standing watching me with his arms folded ,shaking his head and tapping his toe impatiently.

“Don’t you know that you cannot reverse time? It is like a river; it flows in one direction. You might as well try to push the rising sun back down below the horizon or stop the seedling from growing into a great oak tree,” Grim said.

I continued to ignore his words even though I knew that they rang true and continued to struggle with the clock’s hands.

“Go away, I am not ready for you!” I yelled.

“Okay, okay; do your exercises, diet, and live on vegetables if you like, I can wait! As it turns out, I have a better prospect over at Prospect Park right now anyway.”

He decided to run a half marathon after sitting on the couch for six months! They are working on him now but I don’t think that he will make it,” laughed The Grim Reaper. I don’t need this aggravation. I’ll be back in good time!” With that he walked away to go find the nearest subway station. I climbed down from the clock tower with a new perspective, to appreciate every moment of life. I rode back to the park his words spinning around in my head and cycled round and round the park meditating on the cycle of life.

 

Jim

June 2022