an old writer and his words

  • 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

  • INTO THE DARKNESS

    We live in an age when logic has failed and our days come with the darkness of night leaving all of our plans and dreams derailed. We imagined a world, fully detailed to leave our children, that was their birthright. We live in an age when logic has failed and the battles we fought, the…

    Lou Faber

  • AGAIN, REALLY?

    As you age, and I writefrom increasingly painful personal experience,life becomes ever more paradoxical.Things you once could easily do,wanted to do often, become difficultand some almost impossible(get your mind out of that gutter,I meant things like heavy liftingAnd home maintenance projects).And things you never thoughtyou would ever do becomethe stuff of daily life (just askyour…

    Lou Faber

  • CH-CH-CH-CHANGES

    Walking back through my lifeI can now begin to see when and wherethings changed, where I changed, wherethe place I thought of as my homebecame alien, altered, as thoughthe weathering of time wore awaywhat I now know were carefully appliedveneers, real enough seeming to meand to others who stopped to visit.And when the music changed…

    Lou Faber

  • LINGER

    Sitting in the mall strip plaza coffee shopworking my way slowly through a nonfat cortadoI stared at the everything bagel lyingforlornly on the saucer, its thin coatof peanut butter wishing, as I did, that itwas a spread of cream cheese, all of thisa portent of a difficult day to follow, as ifpunishment for a former…

    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

  • PINNING HOPES

    As a child I always avoidedpins, and not becauseI feared at all getting stuck,that could be a small badgeof courage, no my fearwas what might be onthe head of that pin or this.It was more elementalthan that, it raised an almostexistential issue that I wasnot yet prepared to deal with.But I had it on good…

    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

  • SUZY

    What do you sayon the loss of a child?We sat in the loungedrinking a vile potionfrom a hollowed pineapple,giggling insanelyfor no reason.We wandered the tunnelsfaces painted,clowns in bedlam.We lay togetheron a mattresson the floor and listenedto Aqualungmy arms around youboth, but sleepcame slowly and we talkeduntil night ran fromthe encroaching sun. I can feel her…

    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