an old writer and his words

  • ALOFT

    As a child I often flew kites, which is to say that I ran haphazardly pulling a string and dragging a wood frames paper rhombus across the park. My father laughed until seeing me on the edge of tears he took up the string and dragged the kite across the park. One day a strong…

    Lou Faber

  • GHOST SITTING

    I sat with the ghost again this morning, the one who inhabits the body that was once my father. Ghosts find it difficult to speak from within living bodies, so mostly it squeezed my hand and offered an occasional weak smile or nod, said I looked good, but ghosts do have trouble seeing out of…

    Lou Faber

  • ADOPTING A HISTORY

    She likes to tell him that he came from a small village in Lithuania. He prefers to remind her that he was born in the District of Columbia which has never been mistaken for a small village in Lithuania, although he knows he could find several who speak Lithuanian there. And, he points out to…

    Lou Faber

  • THE FACT OF ADOPTION

    The fado fades under the weight of the Highland pipes and dreams of Cascais fade into the Scottish sky. Where once I thought of wandering Lisbon looking for my face, I imagine I see it in the Grampians, reflected off the lochs whose headwaters now feed my dreams. One joy of being adopted is that…

    Lou Faber

  • AN OFF YEAR

    The was a winter, once, where even in the north the snow refused to fall, ice rejected jamming the culverts, and the sky stared down in amazement. That was the year trees would not bud and flowers fled deeper into the sweetness of the earth, grass sighed and lay indolent. It was a year my…

    Lou Faber

  • THIRD EYE, NEEDING GLASSES

    You ask me what is the first thing I can remember, and seem surprised when I tell you memory is much like a Buddhist river, never the same twice. Memory is a stage and I am one to forget my lines, today it’s the window in the back of a Miami Beach bus amazed at…

    Lou Faber

  • REFLECTIONS ON A FATHER NEVER KNOWN

    The sun is obscured by half-lidded eyes.  We are standing together on a small beach.  Twenty toes are curled in the wave packed sand.  We are in Cascais, or perhaps Estoril. The waves spread their foam capped fingers through the rocks and cradle us.  He wants to drive down the coast, to see the boats…

    Lou Faber