Storm Cloud (Ecce Scriptor)   Give me six hours to chop down a tree, and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.                               —ABRAHAM LINCOLN   Do you think I’m doing nothing when I sit here in silence? What you don’t see is the slow, steady stropping of my pen,   my purpose gathering like a storm cloud on the western horizon where it’s been unnoticed, unregarded in the crowded   skyscape of everything else. That’s fine with me. Behold the writer — beetle-browed, disheveled, a bit abstracted, behind   in his rent, blessed and bedamned with the freedom to fail and try again, to dream mindful of words and their measure. Look at me.     © Michael Fleming Dummerston, Vermont March 2025