an old writer and his words

  • A SOUTHERN WINTER (HAIKU)

    In the dark of night clouds gavotte across the sky we awake to rain There is no snow here – we dream of Fujiyama imagine winter. A thousand cranes rise take wing over the city smiling at the sun.

    Lou Faber

  • ADIRONDACK EVENING

    Atop the hill the trees are filigree against the fading light. The tents are fireflies twinkling as night reclaims the earth. I am caught up in the chill watching my breath kiss the stars. First Appeared in Blueline, Vol. 22, 2001. Reprinted in Legal Studies Forum, Vol. 29, No. 1, 2005

    Lou Faber

  • EMPTY SPACE

    We sit and discuss complex viscosity values and loss tangent ranges throwing in relaxation modulus for good measure, but we end up at ratios, slicing the data ever thinner, until I fog over and remember that today is the first day of summer, and the birds, bathing in the sun play like children finally freed…

    Lou Faber

  • THE COLOR OF BEAUTY

    They sat on the bench in the park looking out on the small lake, two ducks swimming slowly in circles. “Dawn is the most beautiful moment of the day, the sun chasing the moon and setting the sky ablaze, orange, crimson, flame, there is simply nothing,” he said, “in the world quite like it.” “It…

    Lou Faber

  • IN ABSENCE

    The dawn failed to appear this morning. There was a slight lightening of the sky, more a change of grayscale shade that a shift in time-honored by the sun. The crows seemed to notice, why else would they stay silent, so unlike most days when the first rays of sun were the call to take…

    Lou Faber

  • TOCK

    He notes with alacrity that modern man has stripped all logic from time, rendering it an arbitrary temporal system based on mechanics, and even that is quadrennially imperfect. Once it was seasons, which came and went in orderly fashion, but heating was never a science then. Later it was the moon a reusable calendar and…

    Lou Faber

  • HIBERNAL DREAMS

    Outside, even the crows are quiet this morning, seeking a warmth that eludes us all. We all know winter has finally arrived as we shiver and try so very hard to remember the warmth of summer, the bloom of the lilacs and the magnolia petals falling gently to mark our path.

    Lou Faber

  • OR NOT

    He screwed up his face into the scowl that fairly shouted to all, “Don’t Ask!”. She knew better but knew also that she had no choice, “What’s the matter now?” “It’s just,” he said, softening a bit, “that I so seldom get the weather I need, much less the weather I want, it’s never the…

    Lou Faber

  • FORETELLING

      The chill foretells winter much as birth foretells death but for humans there is only the spring of childhood.

    Lou Faber

  • CHANGES TOMORROW

    Tomorrow will arrive as each day before it: it will snow or not snow, rain or not rain or be sunny or perhaps some combination. At this time tomorrow darkness will settle in and the clouds, if there are any will shroud the moon if there is any, and, if not the street light outside…

    Lou Faber