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IN VINO VERITAS
He is convinced he is simply squeezing the sun out of each plump orb. The sun lies within, but he lets it kiss its skin goodbye before pouring the sunshine into the oak barrels where the sun will have time to concentrate until it slips over the lips perhaps on a cold autumn day and…
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SLAINTE
It is just that sort of summer day when the sparse clouds crawl ever more slowly across the city, peering down, as if wishing they could end their journey, knowing this won’t happen. On the fields of Falkirk and Culloden Moor stained with the blood of ancestors who, only now, claim me as one of…
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VLADIMIR
Krevchinsky froze his ass off on the Siberian plain. The gray concrete box was traded for concrete gray skies, the whistle of the truncheon gives way to winter’s blasts. It was in many ways easier when the beatings came neatly marking the days dividing days between pain and exhaustion, all under the watchful eye of…
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WALKING
Today was downright exhausting, and my hour long walk along the river left me dripping and drooping. It wasn’t different than most days, same time, same place, and the usual 756 miles, according to my old friend Orion, who was watching from his usual perch, unseen, as he prefers it by day. When I was…
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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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RETREAT
At meals they sit elbow to elbow in silence, on the mat shoulder to shoulder staring into the wall. You know that most are searching deep in the silence and they grow sad, finding, the question is always just beyond grasp. She stays behind, sits alone on her mat calm in the interbeing.
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DREAM MARGIN
In the night what I am perched on the edge of sleep you appear, just out of the dream shadows, avoiding the light, you are featureless. I call to you and I think you must be smiling but your voice is the wind through the Austrian pines and the drip from the ever shrinking icicles…
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OH, REALLY?
The box said all natural. That alone was nothing unusual, but it was on tomatoes. How, he wondered, could tomatoes but unnatural, or worse still partially natural, partially not. Had they cloned the tomato? Would cloning make it unnatural, and if so, how could you tell it from the original which was natural? And these…
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LOST AND FOUND
He cannot be certain when he lost it. He isn’t even sure where he lost it. He knew he had it, had it for years, and then, once when he looked for it, it was nowhere to be found. He wasn’t all that upset at the loss. It was more that it was familiar, that…
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TEXTURAL MIND
Somewhere in here there is a hidden irony, not irony really, but a close enough approximation. We are creatures of softness, we relish textures that yield to our touch, would rather be swaddled than armored, vastly prefer the kitten or puppy to the armadillo or porcupine. It’s all about softness really. And despite this primal…
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an old writer and his words 