an old writer and his words

  • DROPPING

    As night settles in the clouds grow uncertain of their intentions. It is hard to realize that a boundary is silently crossed and summer has retreated into the past, leaving a new season in its wake, harder to know that tomorrow we will awaken into an autumn that at first seems no different then her…

    Lou Faber

  • BETWEEN EARTH AND HEAVEN

    He is certain that the sky is always blue and when it seems cloudy it is just that Magritte has risen from his grave and brush in hand, painted the sky and clouds. She scoffs at the idea, knowing full well the clouds are merely rice paper cutouts floating on a gentle breeze.

    Lou Faber

  • CLOUDY

    They promised rain yesterday. It did not rain yesterday. The sky grew dark, the clouds gathered, convening, no doubt, to consider rain but clearly they did not reach a consensus. They say it will rain today, but we have no reason at all to believe them, for they are wispy and darting around under the…

    Lou Faber

  • MARCHING ON

      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…

    Lou Faber

  • TEMPUS FUGIT

    The problem with bringing then into now is that now slips away and then no longer really exists. You may wish all you like for summer to remain, but Autumn demands her due and even the leaves grow tired and need that final rest. Do not deny the clouds, but treat them like a stray…

    Lou Faber

  • CELESTIAL HARMONY

    The summer sky barely pauses to consider what might be going on beneath it. Everything seems to move, there can be no stillness. Once in the rarest of whiles, the sky and the river align, and each is frozen in a stasis that defies understanding or categorization. The stars realize this and shine a moment…

    Lou Faber

  • AUTUMN

      Once again I can imagine it arriving one morning probably unannounced. I won’t see it coming until I find myself in the middle of it, wrapped up within, always knowing that it will slide away without warning and the leaves will fall in regret.

    Lou Faber

  • WINDSONG

      Far out on the mesa the wind sings an alluring song to the melody of the wooden flute. You can sit among the sage, and like the orange orbed coyote around you, stare up at the moon and look for the spirits of the ancient ones that lived in these mountains, the tricksters who…

    Lou Faber

  • NIGHT ARRIVES

      As night advances, the clouds march in slow retreat to the horizon under the tattoo of the crows cadenced cawing. Once gone from sight, under the always watchful moon, they shall regroup and prepare to reemerge in the first shadow of the sun of morning.

    Lou Faber

  • INSTRUCTIONS TO THE NOVICE HAIKUIST (AND AN EXAMPLE)

    INSTRUCTIONS: Make certain that you carefully count syllables and mention summer   EXAMPLE perhaps not a bang certainly not a whimper– summer’s arrival.

    Lou Faber