Cowards   We all descend from a long line of cowards — the ones who ran, saved themselves, survived, invented tales for their children of how they triumphed, or how God kept them alive to serve his obscure, magisterial purposes. Sprung from the lion’s jaws, delivered from the foe, and dauntless in the face of certain death, we lived — we lived!                                              Or do we come from hunters who exulted in the kill and danced in the firelight and gathered what they could?                     We’re the ones who endured, who built all the cities and painted the caves, but above all persisted. Blood, bluster, fear: providence is whatever got us here.     © Michael Fleming Brattleboro, Vermont November 2014