Dear Mr. Hemingway

Dear,
Mr. Hemingway

I would have been more like F. Scott Fitzgerald, so I know the two of us would have butted heads.

However, underneath that bravado was a sensitive soul, who was chief among my friends in letters.

You reamed masculinity. You hunted Rhinoceri, you hunted Lions, Tigers, Bears. I'm sure you shot a few Ostriches in your day. I'm completely different than you, except in my hatred of war and injustice. I know working in the Red Cross brought your insights into the Spanish Civil War. And Pilar is a masterpiece of a character; you are the only storyteller I've read who knew to do flashbacks in the form of oral stories. I hadn't borrowed that from you--- Organically, I figured it out for myself. But yours are just as organic.

Had the two of us ever met, you'd probably say of me "He's a polymath." Meaning I'd be able to write in several different genres. Though, I wrote them well, you were the master of the novel. Though, I hadn't read a good short story from you yet.

The Old Man and the Sea is my treasure. It inspired my own "The Riddle in the Sea". Just in its titular appeal, however it was the story Steinbeck's Pearl was aiming to be. The Pearl is boring. The Old Man in the Sea kept me up reading all night.

We'd not get along, in that jesting manner. In my youthful days we'd have probably tangled once or twice. You'd win, of course. I was a lousy fighter, but don't tell me that when I was a young buck. I was a good wrestler, pound for pound. That was about it. I actually subdued an opponent once who was trying to kill me--- a legit madman.

However, I respect you as a man and as a sincere friend. I am not a drinker, a smoker, a fighter. And when I say we would not get along, I mean it only in the sense that we're cut from different chords. Not maliciously. For I'd be honored to have gotten beat by Mr. Hemingway in a brawl. 

Sure enough, though, when all is said and done, you were a good man. A knowledgeable man. A respectable journalist. A novelist and a scholar.

I could never craft a story as well as you. My best stories aren't able to match yours. I do not conjure your ghost, so rest in peace Mr. Hemingway. Only, that I hope it wouldn't offend you that I say we wouldn't get along. It wouldn't be violent, nor bitter. It'd just be like two birds, a blackbird and a robin.

I the blackbird, the Poet crying of injustices in the land. You the Red Breasted Robin, walking like a man, and the sign of a budding spring.