Dark figure against the setting sun

Friday afternoon, especially in this time of year, especially in this configuration of light and cloud and bird and blossom, confronts me with death and inevitability of other stripe. It is the time when I feel the pull of the genetic link between myself and myriad dead people. Ancestors. People who have, on the whole, done the wrong thing whenever wrongness was possible, taken the wrong steps and chosen the wrong choices and embraced the wrong ideals and left the wrong messages for posterity. People who did not live to tell the tale.