an old writer and his words

  • FOR THE DEPARTED

    I have a good friend wholikes to say that divorce isthe worst thing you can experience.He has never married, we allnote, and wonder if it is becauseof a fear of divorce or of failure.Those of us who have beenthrough the sausage mill that ismore than a metaphor for divorcewould tell him that divorceis a return…

    Lou Faber

  • AND EVERYWHERE

    Where was my family from?Russia and Poland, mostlyby way of England and Austria,within nervous stop at Ellis Islandjust before the great warchanged everything for all time.Actually not. Not mostly Polandor Russia, the war not a changeof anything really, at mosta precursor of a greater war.You, too, questioner, may be dead nowspeaking from a plot in…

    Lou Faber

  • THE SON SETS

    My adoptive mother said:I chose you from all the others.My adoptive mother meant:when the wheel of fortunestop spinning the arrowpointed you and that was that. My “brother,” biological sonof my adoptive parents said:we have always thought of youjust like a brother.My “brother” meant:we were stuck with youthough you weren’t even half to us. When my…

    Lou Faber

  • WIDOWER

    In the cold nightof another winterhe stares outacross the barren fieldswhich have long forgottenthe taste of the sun.He watches carefullyfor a signbut the naked branchdenies the breeze.He remembershow it once wasin the heatof the dying firethe sweetness of her lipslingering on his tongue.She is gone, has beenso long, her faceis hiddenby the gauzy veilof time.He…

    Lou Faber

  • SO TO SPEAK

    One of the obvious problemswith growing older is the tendencyto begin using phrases you always detestedwhen young: “back in the day,” and it’sequivalents maddened you in your youthand are now a common element of your vernacular. Worse still is the knowledge that the dayswhich you seem to lovingly recallweren’t all that good as you lived…

    Lou Faber

  • OUT OF HIDING

    The hidden joy of youth, and itsinevitable disappointment, isin finding that special person.Each time it is the birth of true love,eventually, save in rare circumstances,it is the death of an illusionand the aching pain accompanying the loss. The certainty of youthful emotionis a bondage that is most often inescapable,and there is no desire to leave…

    Lou Faber

  • CHARLESTON, WV

    Half of me, according to the twistedstrands of deoxyribonucleic acid,has its roots in Liskovo, which would bea simple matter were there not townsby that name in Poland and Belarus,and none in Lithuania, the language of my genes. All of this is preparatory to my visitnext week to the city where my mother,grandparents and great grandparentsare…

    Lou Faber

  • STOICS

    This afternoon the vulture couplesit stoically on the limbsof the long dead tree in the preserve. The rain was torrentialas we watched from the dryconfines of our home, theystood soaked to the featherswith nowhere to hide, knowingthey couldn’t out fly or out climbthe purging clouds, so they setsoaking wet and stared at us. And then…

    Lou Faber

  • COMMON UNDERSTANDING

    It didn’t surprise him that hequickly understood the catthey adopted during the pandemicfor all he had to do was applybasic feline logic, that everythingin her new home was eitherhers or theirs collectively,it was just that simple.He had come from a place,a life, where there had beenhers and theirs, simple.When that life ended, as everyonebut him…

    Lou Faber

  • IN ABSENTIA

    It is, I thinkher lips I miss mosttheir butterfly flutteracross my cheekthen her eyes, almost felinethat see withinbehind wallshastily erectedthat fall to her sight.It is all of thatand the whispered wordslinking heartsthat still echoas she slides into sleep.I cry out to Morpheusmy words are swallowedby the droneof the enginesthat fall as raininto the Sea of…

    Lou Faber