how rare to reach 100 years old, even rarer to have a friend of that many years I didn’t know Bernard as a young, middle age or older man, only from the cusp of his century we are good chums, sharing the silly and deeper things that buddies do but when a history lesson is told by a history still living, just a few words colors the pages of the past and after ten minutes with him, I’m in NY, leaning against a building on Broadway, watching those overweight cars rumble

we’ve done it online, offline over the line, and so many times, crossed the line in pictures and pinups in person and innuendo in moments of fleshy crimes with eyes like knives and licks like beasts awaiting fresh meat, we men, long ago, declared women, the fairest prey how fearless the ones that meet our eyes , as others offer the cold indifferent look-away and hold a breath to ready their tongues if our rudeness arises, before some greater self-defense is required, but

they call it a river, this part-time creek and full-time flood channel with enough occasional water to grow an un-mowed lawn sprinkled with creosote bushes, castor bean plants, cattails and nice-looking Palo Verde tree until a day last December when a bulldozer scraped it flat - like a chunk of skin ripped away ground squirrels and rabbits came out of their deepest dens to see the plowed stew of sand and rock, the year’s harvest gone coyotes quickly lost the hunter’s cove