A Republican

There's a message amidst January's blossoming plum tree.

It's like a painting that's fallen off the wall and been replaced, but upside down by a person unfamiliar with the history of abstract art.

The football coach experiments with wearing a gold wig. He's old and the gold wig's inappropriate. Disturbed by the possibility that people may be laughing behind his back he considers throwing it in the dumpster, but the gold wig pleases his young wife so he continues to wear the thing even when appearing on ESPN.

It's believed that Parmenides of Elea's poem "On Nature" originally contained 3,000 lines, though only 160 of them have survived. When he was asked why he wrote the poem Parmenides answered, "to show a way beyond the beaten paths of man."