an old writer and his words

  • T-CK T-CK

    I cannot determine whymy clock only tocks, as ifsomewhere back timeits ticks beat a hasty retreat. My life is increasingly likethat, a growing series of disconnects,as if life itself, outside of meis enduring a progressive dementia. Perhaps I shouldn’t complain,for both time and I knowthat every one of those ticksis owed to me and I…

    Lou Faber

  • A LOST PEN

    I wrote a poem for my father,about how one afternoonthe oddly green ’57 Caddyappeared in the drivewayand he polished its chrome for hours,even waxed the black bumper bullets.It was the love of his lifehe said, except for his wife,he added after a moment.The years would provethat addition was most likely false.I could send him the…

    Lou Faber

  • DEMENTIA

    He can remember it as though it was just yesterday. Actually it was just yesterday, but for him that had little to do with memory. Bits of his childhood would come flooding back: the city, the cousins who took him in for the few dollars his mother could offer. But his grandsons are a vague…

    Lou Faber

  • DEPARTING

    We now live in a strange world where nothing is as it was mere weeks ago. I am blessed to live on a small nature preserve and have been spending my afternoons with camera in hand. So if you want something other than words (which follow) you are welcome to visit https://www.flickr.com/photos/98342503@N00/, my Flickr site,…

    Lou Faber

  • AS I RECALL

    Like most you believe that if it is worth remembering you will, that memory is keyed to some measure of value and if you forget that value had diminished without your noticing. You accept this as a sort of gospel truth for you cannot recall that you once rejected this argument out of hand, for…

    Lou Faber

  • WEAVING

    She plucks the odd loose thread puts it on the table and finds another and a bit of what could be twine. She weaves them together loosely, with seeming abandon until they are an ill formed braid barely hanging together, a jumble of color and fabric, a true hodge-podge. But when she says to all…

    Lou Faber

  • THE FOG

    I speak to my father every week or so our conversations are as long as ever but we are rapidly becoming little more than a skipping record. He mostly recalls my name and the various parts one with the other of us has had rebuilt but even that is quickly slipping into the fog that…

    Lou Faber

  • TOMORROW

    Tomorrow I will lie to him will tell him when he asks, at least the first ten times he he does, that she is doing fine, that she is a tough old bird, that she’ll outlive us all, that she’s a Taurus, the bull and he will remember the end of their marriage, the Battle…

    Lou Faber

  • 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…

    Lou Faber

  • GIVE US THIS DAY

    The old bus shelter has spray painted walls and a broken metal bench. Each morning he shuffles up the hill, a battered leatherette briefcase clutched tightly in his right hand, a copy of the Seattle Times “Nixon in China” in the other. He sits calmly on the bench case between his knees and waits patiently…

    Lou Faber