While The Writer Waits
by David Michaels

Over the summer I decided to take a creative writing class at the local community college. I figured my T.V. and recliner could use a break. Besides, how many reruns of Star Trek does a person need to watch in a lifetime?

The mall construction was in plain view of the highway, and all it took was a couple of rubberneckers to bring traffic to a complete stop. Then, like or not, the rest of us were forced to watch men in yellow hats stand around while more men in yellow hats operated big yellow machines.

Beam me up Scotty- Spock- somebody- please get me outta here...

The engineering student watches from his car and marvels at the power of the machinery and calculates the torque required to haul the tons of rocks from the site.

From his pickup truck the archeology student's mouth waters as he ponders just how many fossils are being unearthed by the bulldozers digging and scratching at the soil.

Sitting proudly in her hybrid, the heart of the environmental major anguishes over why man continues to destroy the earth and pollute the air.

While the writer waits in his '68 VW bug, he has yet to come up with an idea for a writing assignment due this particular morning. He stares at the shoulder of the highway where cigarette butts, flattened soda cans and scraps of paper litter the roadside. The grass growing through the cracks in the pavement cause him to scratch his head. To him the mystery of Stonehenge pales in comparison as to why fescue seems to thrive in concrete and yet struggles in a well fed and watered lawn.

In the distance the writer hears the repetitious beeping of a dump truck backing up. This pulls the writer deeper into a place where he spends much of his time... daydreaming. He can't stop searching his mind for ideas no more than he can stop breathing. The tempo of the slow methodical beeping reminds him of a song, and he wonders if the walrus was really Paul?

While the writer waits he sees a hawk circling above. If he could fly like that he'd be sitting in his classroom working on his assignment, that is- if he had an idea to write about. Higher and higher the hawk climbs till he's only a speck.

Then, from out of nowhere, lightning strikes, but no one notices, not even the men in yellow hats- only the writer. Like a bolt from the blue, and without warning- an idea hits.