Downtown Chicago. I wandered through a mélange of tall steel and cold glass, with racing taxis drowning the wide streets, past a sprawling federal plaza ringed by anti-terror truck barriers. I struggled against a stream of a half-million commuters. I despaired of ever finding natural things here. But on the edge of the heartless granite and marble of the plaza hemmed in on three sides by cold, black government edifices, there they were, some of the toughest, tiniest things— house sparrows scurrying to grab a crumb and then darting under a stone bench, out of the way of the pigeons’ zig zaggy dance. Then, the caw of crows echoed out from a State Street alley. And soon I was alone in the thistle green of a Grant Park softball field. Two crows called to each other, landing on a lamp post. A pair of red squirrels, indigenous to America but largely pushed out by the European gray, gathered bread in their cheeks. They looked solid and chubby in this mild Chicago winter. Gulls shrieked to the wind along Lake Michigan.
Life will endure. We can’t stamp it out because we are life. 99% of all species that ever lived are now extinct, but still, look at the abundance. Every crevice of creation is jam packed with living things. The average species endures but a few million years before passing on forever. The forms in which I may come to expect life to package itself may change. They may not always appear to me in the predetermined pleasing shape. Life may offer itself to me as pigeons and gulls and squirrels, but it’s still 100% natural. And life itself remains constant. It’s all struggling to survive out there just like me. And like me, it may be afraid sometimes, and lonely sometimes, and hungry sometimes, too. But as a whole, life is invulnerable. No matter what the catastrophe, it reshapes, evolves, endures, flourishes. It’s 100% successful to date.
© 2022 by Michael C. Just
Mike’s novel, The Dirt: The Journey of a Mystic Cowboy, is available in softcover or eBook formats through Amazon.
You can purchase the book through this website. Or go straight to amazon at https://www.amazon.com/s?k=the+dirt+journey+of+a+mystic+cowboy&crid=1S40Q4BXSUWJ6&sprefix=the+dirt%3A+journey+of+a+m%2Caps%2C180&ref=nb_sb_ss_i_1_23
Mike’s other titles, including The Crippy, The Mind Altar, and Canyon Calls, are available through this website or through Amazon at https://www.amazon.com/-/e/B002
Four of his short stories have recently been published online:
Lies, Ltd. has been published by The Mystery Tribune @ Lies, Ltd.: Literary Short Fiction by Michael C. Just (mysterytribune.com)
The Obligate Carnivore has been published by the Scarlet Leaf Review @ Category: MICHAEL JUST – SCARLET LEAF REVIEW
I See You, Too has been published by the 96th of October @ I See You, Too – 96th of October
Offload, a short story about a man who can heal any disease, is now live and can be read at The Worlds Within at Offload – The Worlds Within