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PHYSICS
She is seven, going on some much larger number. She believes in the tooth fairy. She believes in the scientific method. She believes in vegetarianism and ecology. She believes in helping her parents and was doing so when she found her baby teeth in a small bag in their dresser. She no longer believes in…
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STORM FRONT
I arrive home to the wreckage of the tornado that is a three-year-old. Picking up the pieces scattered about we both think of how soon the next storm will arrive and how we will welcome its coming.
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APPROACHING NOW
I’ll be there soon, so hang in there just a bit longer. I do want to meet the beautiful young woman you mentioned in our calls, or is there more than one, because while your vision is supposed to be good, it seems almost all women younger than a certain ever-increasing age are now beautiful…
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ESQUIRE
Even as a young child I imagined being a lawyer was a noble profession, spent Sunday evenings in front of the old Motorola TV watching Perry Mason stride up to the rail, stare into the witness’ eyes, with Paul Drake smiling in the first row. I tried to make my younger brother play Paul but…
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CRYPTIC (an acrostic)
God, it was a long night, unending needs unsated, brought to the edge man is a cruel beast, half master as pleading supplicant, half slave much the child, begging, wanting as if food or thought would give man humanity, elevated above needs, existing outside, independent a God, ruler of illusion and fantasy. First Appeared in…
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BEHOLDER’S EYE
It was sunrise, he was on the banks of the river, and he knew, in that moment that he would remember the scene, if not the name of the river, or where on its banks he was, that was of no consequence at all, only the beauty. When asked about it, he would say that…
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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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ARF
Sitting on the fourth shelf from the top, in the second rank of bookcases in my office is a somewhat worn copy Dylan Thomas is “Portrait of the Artist as a Young Dog.” I can’t admit to ever having read it, or an ability to now recall if I did, but I know I’ve had…
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ENFOLDING
As a child I was quite adept folding sheets of newspaper into paper hats and paper boats. The boats immediately took on water, and sank like the sodden masses I made them to be, but I could wear the hats for hours, until my mother had to scrub my forehead to get off the printer’s…
