-
OCCLUSION
After the stroke he couldn’t remember much, was the woman in white who bathed him his wife or someone he slept with once before he had gotten married. Monogamy was a word that he remembered, though not its meaning, or why he had sworn to abide it. When the aide brought in the flowers, they…
-
HUH?
The problem with youth isn’t that you misspend it, or even don’t appreciate it as it is happening, or even expect it to go on forever, for those would be the simplest hurdles to leap even at your now advanced age. The true problem with youth isn’t even those around you, grandchildren, high schoolers that…
-
AGING
He is four today. He’s been practicing being four, so it is somewhat second nature. But he made a decision. Next year he will be five. He was going to be 27 next year, but decided that can wait another year. I asked him why he was delaying, he said, “You get better presents when…
-
STYX IT TO YOU
They clearly don’t get it and odds are they never will. They think perhaps prayer will work or youth will provide some sort of immunity, maybe an executive decree, good luck with that given the swinging there to that old White House, with the ridiculous spiked fence in the middle of an avenue named first…
-
THE WEIGHT
We are obligated to carry memories, and as we get older the burden grows ever heavier, we bend under its weight, knowing we dare not lose even one for once castoff, the weight is carried off like the smallest feather on a storming wind. Soon enough it is we who will become the burden that…
-
SPEAK NOW, OR . . .
There is a great deal left to be said, and we assume more than enough time for the task, but the ferryman hews to his own schedule and our plans, intentions, desires are beyond his knowledge or caring. It is best to say what you need before recalling that silence is eternal.
-
DETOUR
He always wanted to take the scenic route home, it didn’t matter if it took longer, he probably preferred that and he rarely commented on the scenery. It was more that he didn’t want to get where they were going and the scenic route was guaranteed to take longer and with luck they’d get lost…
-
MINE, NEVER MINE
I imagine to myself that this is my house abutting on my small portion of this street sitting on my small patch of land I pay the mortgage and the taxes, so I am entitled to rent this delusion just a bit longer, and it all works, until I stop and think But before I…
-
PATER INCOGNITA
He often comes to me in dreams. In most he is faceless, but intently present, speaking in a voice I instantly know, nothing like mine and totally mine. On occasion his face appears, blurred, as if seen through a scrim, back-lit, vague, an actor in some film I have seen, but yet not that person,…
-
VIOLIN
We sat at the table, sucking the last of the djej from the bones piled along the edge of the platter. “I played for seven years” he said, “under Tilson-Thomas and later Rudel, bad years those, I sat two rows back second from the stage edge.” He was unremarkable, forgettable until he nestled the violin…
-
Subscribe
Subscribed
Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
an old writer and his words 