an old writer and his words

  • LISTENING

    We should have heardthe blasts of the trumpetsthat morning, encircling us,we caged in, imaginingourselves to be innocents. We should have heardbefore that day, but wehad chosen deafness,and the cries, the threatsof warning wereso easily cast aside. As the walls fellaround us we realizedthat we had no escapeand we cried to our Godas they cried out…

    Lou Faber

  • LABORING

    There are those few momentswhen they sit on the bermaround the Igloo jug trying to findthe shade from a spindly palm cut backto almost nothing, the sunetching the sky with a molten heatthat melts away the few cloudsfoolish enough to appear.One keeps an eye outfor the supervisor knowinglunch is hours off and there areno breaks…

    Lou Faber

  • IMPEDIMENTS

    Pause for a moment and considerwhat you truly think of the window,stared at but never seen, at worstan impediment, at best a shield.Is that why it gathers dirt and dust,a vain attempt to establish a presencethat we quickly try to deny again.Doors have an easier time of it forwe must acknowledge them, bidthem a handshake…

    Lou Faber

  • SPACING

    We have been told that spacewith its billions of starsand countless galaxies is vastand still largely empty, a voidthat needs no filling, ever expanding.We are small creatures in that vastness,important only to ourselves, motesof cosmic dust easily forgotten.But the space between heart and mindcan be equally vast, one untetheredfrom the other, always a voidthat we…

    Lou Faber

  • INTO THE DARKNESS

    We live in an age when logic has failed and our days come with the darkness of night leaving all of our plans and dreams derailed. We imagined a world, fully detailed to leave our children, that was their birthright. We live in an age when logic has failed and the battles we fought, the…

    Lou Faber

  • KASSAN’S SLASHING SWORD

    Which path will you walkin trying to find enlightenment?How can you know ifit is the correct path?When you sit and contemplatethis do you take a mental broomand attempt to sweepthe dust of thoughtsinto a corner, thus leavingroom for the Buddha, or doyou let the breeze of practicecarry the dust away? A reflection on Case 68…

    Lou Faber

  • TICK, TICK

    Ignore what the physicists tell you,for truth defies their neat lawsand time accelerates as you age.Stop and consider that the timeyou have left, however much it is,will, per unit of their measure,grow increasingly shorteruntil, of course, you have none leftand then it will cease to matter.So it is best to get on with living.Put aside…

    Lou Faber

  • THE OLD ROCKER

    I reached the point in lifewhere I know the Byrds were right,I was so much older then,I’m younger than that now, andfor good measure Jethro Tull knewI was too old to rock ‘n’ rollbut far too young to die.And yet I am still inchoate,a product of the Big Bang, stellardust accreted temporarily.And the Webb Space…

    Lou Faber

  • WHERE? EXACTLY!

    In Yuma, Arizona today, I have no idea what might have happened. Once, without going to a library and rummaging through microfiche in the dust laden corner of the second basement, I would never be able to find out. And if I did, I would wonder why there was not some simpler way of finding…

    Lou Faber

  • CARTOGRAPHY

    On the map are neatly etched lines drawn by a fine stylus in a skilled hand separating blue from yellow. This soil is cinnamon there tending to mahogany no line, only a post here, one there and a gun emplacement to deter those who cannot see a line writ on water. In the wind the…

    Lou Faber