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ELAINE
It’s 12 degreesthe night airslices throughmy sweatermy teeth chatter.Standing in the lotfetching my cell phonefrom the glove boxmy breath congealsaround my facea cloud.I look upat the moonsnowflakes dancingon my forehead.Luna’s faceis shroudedby a cirrus veil,but her eyesare yoursher lips softcaressingcurl upwardsin a smileas yours.I tell herof my loveand she whispersher lovereflectivelyin the voiceI hearas I…
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BREATHING
Somewhere at this very momenta baby takes its first breath,a man dies unexpectedly,a fledgeling bird takes flight,a star is bornor enters its death throes,one of the last of a species is gone,a battle is fought in a senseless war,a waterway is fouled with pollution,smog grips a city,an old man clings to memories.I am still aliveand…
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THREE HAIKU
With every breathdeath is a moment closerand so is rebirth this unknown riveris not the one I stepped inone minute ago birth is terminalpromising unknown minutesdeath is a rebirth
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TY NEWYDD
In the gently aging house,replete with writersthere are endless roomsin which the muse dartsdispensing her soul.I prefer to sit with the catcurled in an overstuffed chairher head risingand falling imperceptiblyour breaths harmonic.We commune in unspoken dialoga language of silencebespeaking volumesof our shared existence. First published in The River, Sandy River Review, March 2024https://sandyriverreview.com/2024/03/30/seeing-you-again-next-stop-riding-ty-newydd/
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NOT HERE
There were those January nights whenwinter wrapped us in its chill, but withdrewits frequent blanket of clouds, and Iwould go outside peering throughthe fog of my breath and lookinto the sky at the aurora borealis,watching the electrons danceon a black scrim dotted with myriad stars.Years later and miles away I missthe occasional night shows for…
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THIS IS WHAT IT IS
It happened unexpectedly,but then perhaps it always happensunexpectedly, though in my firstthirty year effort it never fully happenedand its momentary flickerswere no more than quickly fading embers.This time it happened early on,arrived without warning, thentook up residence and broughtwith it a silence where breathsgrew synchronous and words,our stock in trade, were renderedsuperfluous, synapses magically linked.And…
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ATONEMENT
Someone said that with each breathyou take you are inhaling atomsthat Einstein once inhaled, andif that is true you are also inhalingatoms that Stalin and Hitler inhaled.But extend that logic, when youwalk the old cities of Europe,and particularly those near wherethe Nazis built their camps, pausefor a long moment and ask yourselfon whose ashes you…
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PLAYIN’ WHAT’S NOT THERE
Some say Miles said it’s the space between the notes –that’s where the music is.We heard him, we smiled,we anticipated the nextnote and the next.Outside my windowa blue jayrecites his morning prayer,the child’s laughbreaks the frozen skyand shivers the maple.Then all is silence –even the windholds its breathnot in anticipationbut to create the voidthat nature…
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FOR THE DEPARTED
I have a good friend wholikes to say that divorce isthe worst thing you can experience.He has never married, we allnote, and wonder if it is becauseof a fear of divorce or of failure.Those of us who have beenthrough the sausage mill that ismore than a metaphor for divorcewould tell him that divorceis a return…
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HYMNAL
Open to page 147 of your hymnals.There is nothing to sing therefor the words of promise oncefound there have witheredand faded, carried off on nowtoxic winds, so hold your breathor whatever heaven you imaginewill be too soon be approachingat a speed exceeding imagination. You don’t remember how you got here,things happened around youwhen you weren’t…
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an old writer and his words 