an old writer and his words

  • THE OLD MAN

    My father was the old mancurled in the hospital bed,his mind and memoriesseeping into the sheetsuntil only the husk remainedand I knew that it, too,would soon be reduced to ash.In my dream I wasthe old man in that bedbut I knew it was not mefor I clearly rememberedmy fading father wellwhile he, in those days,remembered…

    Lou Faber

  • BREATHING

    Somewhere at this very momenta baby takes its first breath,a man dies unexpectedly,a fledgeling bird takes flight,a star is bornor enters its death throes,one of the last of a species is gone,a battle is fought in a senseless war,a waterway is fouled with pollution,smog grips a city,an old man clings to memories.I am still aliveand…

    Lou Faber

  • MY JUDAS

    He, the one I called brotherwanted whatever I hadto give, a droit deprimogeniture, and Icould easily be cast aside,a genetic other with claimonly of time, not blood.Why did they concede to himor were they aware?It hardly matters nowfor they are gone, sheto rest with her daughter,he I know not wherefor there was nothingin the text…

    Lou Faber

  • GROUND HOLD

    She sits in the middle seat of an oversold DC-9, Carhartt jacket and watch cap pulled tightly over her hair, a blond wisp slipping out the side. She cradles on her lap a tawny brown Stetson with a tooled leather and silver hat band. “It’s never goin’ in an overhead, my fiancee’d go up there…

    Lou Faber

  • IN PASSING

    There are always eerie momentswhen you learn of the deathof someone you knew brieflyseveral decades before.You struggle to remember allyou can of your interactions,places, events, even conversations.But the departed always seems justas they looked when you lastsaw them hardly older, hardto imagine death has claimedsomeone you see as young,while your mirror constantlyreminds you of how…

    Lou Faber

  • ON LEARNING PAINFULLY

    I cannot begin to tell youhow glad I am that I neverfollowed through on the ideaof flying to Lisbon and searchingfor you or some record of you.After all, she told the adoptionagency when she gave me upthat you were a Portuguese Jewshe met in Washington, D.C.so the odds were good you couldbe found in the…

    Lou Faber

  • THREE HAIKU

    With every breathdeath is a moment closerand so is rebirth this unknown riveris not the one I stepped inone minute ago birth is terminalpromising unknown minutesdeath is a rebirth

    Lou Faber

  • WHEN

    When I finally found you,when I finally knelt at your grave,when I finally said hello,when I finally said goodbye,when I finally touched the groundin which you are buriedon the hillside across the riverfrom the city where you were born,a Jewish girl in West Virginianot long removed from Lithuania,when I said my farewell that morningknowing I…

    Lou Faber

  • SO CLOSE AND YET

    Some say that we were oncebriefly so close you couldproperly call us one person.I know it did not last, and Igave up looking for youfor the longest time, althoughI always felt the connectionbetween us had never weakened.Years later I did get withineight or so feet of you but younever acknowledged my presenceso I moved on…

    Lou Faber

  • ENDING HERE

    I am still not certainhow I ended up hereon the other side of silencewhere words go to slowly die.It was to be foreveruntil severed cruelly by deathbut neither of us diedin manifest ways, justsmall deaths that over timesevered the bonds that still held,a death-borne parting of sorts.It was never a mistakeor an omission of logic,…

    Lou Faber