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PHOTO
Oddly I have a photo of my grandmother’s grave, but not one of my mothers, either of them actually, and we’ve yet to have a funeral for the one who raised me. I forgive the one who gave me life, for she gave me to one she felt could care for me well and she…
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THE CEMETERY, AFTER THE BATTLE
They come to her in the dark the voices whisper, she hears them from behind half lidded eyes they sound like the children that once ran across the open field chasing the ball, a too slow bird a mortar shell whose fall outpaced them all, left them scattered, shattered, marked by simple wooden crosses that…
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ARMAGEDDON
There are a group of them who stare at the sky knowing it is coming launched on its course at the beginning of time which has no beginning. Some say it will be soon others are less certain when but all accept without question its inevitability, and wonder what will remain in its aftermath, seas…
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VILLAGE
The village of my grandfather still stands amid the fields adobe walls stained by soot from the fireplace birds nesting in the summer warmed chimney singing. The ancient scythe leans against the wall, its blade embedded in the crusted soil as the old tractor idles in the field. Armies have trod this ground ignoring the…
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CHILD OF GHOSTS
I am a child of ghosts, my parents adopted and birth, all visit me, but only in my dreams, for ghosts prefer the reality that dreams allow. Some say that dreams are not real, but they live in the mind as do every other reality I experience each day, my senses merely inexact lenses for…
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A PLACE OF MONOLOGUES
The cemetery is a place of monologues, family histories laid bare, admissions, secrets long kept hidden finally revealed You must listen carefully, for the voices speak only in hushed tones, befitting both place and circumstance. There is no dialog, no riposte, no response for in this place, that would be put of place, censorious, Thy…
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TIME OUT
You could feel the tears embedded in the email “We didn’t know she had only three years.” She is 84 and failing in so many small ways that the prognosis comes with great pain, but barely shock save for its delivery. So we cherish the remaining days and cast the estimate aside.
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PASSING
He has been gone over a year and they need to erect the headstone before the first hard freeze, but it has rained for several days and the ground is too soft. Although I can still hear his cackling laugh he lingers less and his smell is slowly fading from the old bomber jacket. First…
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IN MOURNING
These days we collectively mourn those we have sacrificed on the holy altar of our ignorance. There was a time when we limited war to one per generation, but we now wage them in clusters, it being easier to deal with the interminable periods of boredom where we have nothing to do but imagine peace.
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FUNEREAL
The priest droned on, a short passage from Micah had some questioning prophecy. Within the coffin we suspect Agnes too grew even more impatient, wanting final rest, wanting the party to begin, hating the tears. Later, with wine flowing, somewhere in the gray sky I imagine her knowing wink.
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an old writer and his words 