Fountain – Six Sentence Story

George was told that the fall colors this year were particularly beautiful near the nature center and so he went there and followed a trail leading from the picnic tables by the river.

He hadn’t thought that he had ever been there before, a place where parents would take young children, but then the fountain of his memory opened. He recalled that there should be a loop up ahead of this trail leading back to the center and sure enough there it was with the remembered rustic rail fencing and signs. He also remembered his father and uncle slowly walking behind him while his mother and aunt were waiting for them with sandwiches and pie.

As George returned to the nature center, having forgotten all about the foliage, a rush of regret and remorse led to repentance, something he should have expressed decades ago, for all of his idle words and rebellious deeds directed against his family. Leaving the center he felt a burden lift from his heart opening a future he had not imagined was even there before, but which had been waiting for him all this time.

Denise offers the prompt word “fountain” to be used in this week’s Six Sentence Stories. I was thinking of the last two verses of Psalm 138.

GirlieOnTheEdge Denise Farley's six-sentence-stories icon
GirlieOnTheEdge Denise Farley’s six-sentence-stories icon
Trail

Author: Frank Hubeny

I enjoy walking, poetry and short prose as well as taking pictures with my phone.

51 thoughts on “Fountain – Six Sentence Story”

  7. ‘Leaving the center he felt a burden lift from his heart opening a future he had not imagined was even there before, but which had been waiting for him all this time.’ Great line in a fine piece of reminiscence.

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  11. Makes you wonder at times – a somewhat arbitrary interaction causes an (re)action as simple as taking a walk in the woods to enjoy the beauty of fall foliage. The body never forgets. Call it divine intervention or life’s attempt at balancing an individual scale.
    What an excellent metaphor you used Frank, of the leaves preparing for winter, for your character’s own “transformation”.

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  13. I’m with the others, particularly Paul and Denise; excellent choice in manifestation of the prompt (noun, yet, nearly verb and the parallel construction (or subtext or whatever the correct term in rhetoric may be) of not only death and remembrance but change and transformation.
    damn!*

    *compliment on a very fine Six

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  14. This is such a powerful story! Wow that made me think of memeories I had then finding a place that suddenly I recall being there before…but with a spiritual twist in this story! Wow grateful for this Gospel pointing story!

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  16. Beautiful SSS. It truly is never too late to repent, and sometimes it requires being at just the right place at the right time for certain memories to be stirred that leads one to understand oneself and his past interactions with others, finding new found meaning and a desire to change.

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