Better Late Than Never

"It's Christmas. Little late for flying south."

"Ya think?"

"I think there's things I'm putting off myself."

"Can't you just enjoy the sight?"

"I wish I could. I wish my thoughts would fly south."

The two friends watched, occasionally passing the binoculars back and forth, till the evening light and the tossing ocean finished the presentation. Then they got up from the dock and walked back to the car.

"I reckon they'll make it. They're birds. They got instincts."

"My instincts are frozen. I can't feel my cheeks."

"It'll warm up here directly."

"Aren't you the optimist?"

"Aren't you glad you came? Would you rather have stayed home doing all those things you're putting off?"

"I'm glad. I would have put them off there too and then felt twice as bad."

"Glad and bad, huh?"

"Well, I even put off getting out for way too long."

"Better late than never, eh?"

"A little. Thank you for talking me into it."

They were quiet on the way back to town. The one friend noticed a tear on the other friend's cheek. And then a tear appeared in the first friend's eye, as if to keep the other tear company.

29 December 2021
Texas Jim
Prospect, Nova Scotia
www.granitecoast.ca