Content Disclosure: Mild Violence
He said later that he knew almost immediately—knew before he’d finished reading it through before he’d even reached the third stanza. That happened sometimes, every once in a long while: a piece of art—a movie, a novel, or a poem, as it were, in this case—that didn’t reveal its treasures slowly but instead all at once, bowling you over with the staggering force of its insight, the words leaping off the page to take your hunched shoulders and shake them, to remind you not just why you loved art, but why you loved life, or why you had loved life and could again.
For the first time in thirty-five years, Elroy packed his papers (yes, he still insisted on hard copies of everything) into his briefcase and left the office early. It was June, raining, and he didn’t have an umbrella or a proper jacket, but he marched into the street with his head held high. He gazed upward and laughed in wonderment as fat drops smacked his forehead and flowed in rivulets down the lines of his face.
He walked from the office towers to the park with the pond and followed the paved path along its perimeter. He admired the new leaves trembling on the elms, the brown ducks preening in the water, and even smiled at the smattering of fellow
