Passing in hallways

A friend of mine who teaches photography was walking by me the other day in our schoolhouse.

“Don’t you just love empty hallways?” she asked. We were in one of the tucked-away spans of quiet linoleum.

“Is that a hint for me to duck into this door?” I asked back, smiling. She laughed.

“No, ha ha! I just love the quiet. I don’t know, it feels like…well…I don’t know. You know, with all of the pictures of past leaders here on the walls. It’s like…”

“A sense of hushed majesty?”

She looked at me for a second and smiled. “Wow, you writers. You’re dangerous.”

Disarmingly. Words are picture frames, housing ideas that touch off flash fires in the mind. A properly primed set of words can take a man to his knees, or adjoin a woman’s mind with her soul. Poetry is the swordplay of of the mind. Deft strokes and purposed cuts can winnow away the thickest skin

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