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ON MORTALITY
Death was never something we considered, until that certain, ill-defined moment when our immortality suddenly disappeared, and in its place was a reality to be avoided. Even once death became a shadow, always lurking around us, we kept our face toward the sun, so that death might not be seen in the bright light of…
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A SUDDEN DEPARTURE
You sneaked away one night. You were there, but while sleep claimed me, you were gone without notice or warning. Where should I look for you? In these barren hills where the spirits of the first nations roam, looking for their ancestral land? Where should I look for you? Wandering these verdant fields where a…
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NIGHT
In the end, it always comes down to night, regardless of the moon, if any, it’s faint light drowned by the city’s oppressive glow, headlights, streetlights and once, spotlights painting the sky, traceable down to that new place we don’t wish or can’t afford, would never dare to go. Death is omnipresent, his shadow is…
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THE GIFTS
They brought him myrrh on a flaming salver and all he could do was say “This is something I would expect from a butcher or a carpenter, and the camera angles would never work, so bring me napalm or punji stakes that we have proven to work.” They brought him ripe oranges and the sweet…
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REMEMBERING ANOTHER FATHER
It was scrawled on the back of a grocery receipt, barely legible. Charles H. Boustead Tunnel, fryingpan river. The river is lower case, its capitals dangling by serifs in one of the tunnel grates that constricts the water’s flow. Outside the full moon is ensnared in the gnarled, barren branches of the white birch. She…
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TRES PIEDRAS
We remember the oddest moments of life, the tragedies, the occasional comedy, but mostly the unusual moments that etch themselves into memory in ways you would not have expected. Driving along the mostly deserted road, a moonless night, or nearly so, the Mesa cold and forbidding, not at all reminiscent of the birth to be…
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DEPARTING
We now live in a strange world where nothing is as it was mere weeks ago. I am blessed to live on a small nature preserve and have been spending my afternoons with camera in hand. So if you want something other than words (which follow) you are welcome to visit https://www.flickr.com/photos/98342503@N00/, my Flickr site,…
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BASHO, REDUX
This poem was recently published in the first issue of a new journal, Punt Volat. You can find it here: https://puntvolatlit.com/issues/winter-2019 If Basho were here today, in this America, at this time, stop briefly and consider what he might write, how he would describe the faces of parents mourning children gunned down in random urban…
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YEATS IF ONLY
Cheever was having a bad day, that much was immediately obvious. Perhaps it was the two martini’s in town before lunch, but he says it only made him giddy. We all know better and by late afternoon his mood has soured completely, his emotions have slipped back into turmoil. He says a few cocktails will…
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VERITÉ
Only in a French movie does a girl stand on a bridge threatening to jump or not and weave a story that so draws us in that by the end, when the couple is together, she now pulling him from the same brink we almost forget that the movie was in a language neither of…
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an old writer and his words 