an old writer and his words

  • THE VEIL OF TIME

    I still search for you behind the veilof time; I cannot look away.I wonder what you saw that night,what you felt in that unexpected,unwanted moment you couldn’t escape.I know I am struggling to reach intoa world I do not yet wish to enter,but all I recall are your eyes, notas they were that night but…

    Lou Faber

  • THE RIVER OF SADNESS

    I have written poems about my grandfathersand the lives I was told they led,having met none of them, but I knewI was appropriating their stories, claimingthem as my legacy although all I was doingwas adopting them, as their children hadadopted me, none of the stories truly mine,and I only family by the thinnest of tiesthat…

    Lou Faber

  • STILL MOURNING

    I think about you often, lying besidemy grandparents on the hillsideoverlooking the Kanawha River,bathed in the utter silencethat only the dead can clearly hear.I think of you more often than shewho replaced you, she who laterreplaced me with her own, Ian adjacency, still useful butno longer fully or truly valued.I think of you lovingly, knowingfor…

    Lou Faber

  • THE ALCHEMISTS HAND

    He said that we are an amalgamof nature and nurture, and oftenthere is no real distinction between them.If only that were my case,I am bifurcated between whatI know what I imagine,lived and what I might have,what was imposedon me by otherssome of which others left me Ifor those they call their own.Blood may or may…

    Lou Faber

  • YES MISTRESS

    When you are owned by a catyou must be constantly wary,for every kindness hides behind ita claw poised as a reminder. Cats realize we are uniquely difficultto train, that we can be finicky,slow to respond to their demands,and they will forgive that, but only to a point. There is much they would teach usabout the…

    Lou Faber

  • A GIFT

    As your birthday approaches, Mother,I should pause and thank youfor your bequest of grace, a gift youleft me on you passing ten years beforeI found you, found myself again.It was more than the helical part of methat finally became apparent, morethan a heritage imagined but unknown.It was something as simple asa college yearbook picture, for…

    Lou Faber

  • THREADS

    They keep arriving in my email,sometimes one or two a day,and then nothing for a week or more.I look at them out of curiosity,because I have learned all I wantedsome time ago and they are like icingon a cake I no longer intend to eat.But they are “family” of sorts, distantalways, remote usually, but I…

    Lou Faber

  • THE PAPER

    He was 11 when he first discovered it. Jimmy knew immediately that (1) it was something remarkable, (2) he didn’t understand it at all, and (3) he dare not let his parents know he had it. It was (3) that gave him the most worry. Not what they would do to him if they discovered…

    Lou Faber

  • STILL MOURNING

    I think about you often, lying besidemy grandparents on the hillsideoverlooking the Kanawha River,bathed in the utter silencethat only the dead can clearly hear.I think of you more often than shewho replaced you, she who laterreplaced me with her own, Ian adjacency, still useful butno longer fully or truly valued.I think of you lovingly, knowingfor…

    Lou Faber

  • MY SORT OF SISTER

    I don’t remember her crib,but it was probably the one that Ihad only recently outgrown, butthe wood was polished pine,the rails topped with plasticthat I had dented with some cribtoy or other, the mattress soft,a mobile hanging off the end.She cried a lot at first, and mothersaid that was what babies did,but she said I…

    Lou Faber