an old writer and his words

  • UNSHOVELING

    There is much to love here,not the least of which is the lackof snow always needing to be shoveledwhen your back is most sore,when you need to be somewhereon a schedule the clouds chose to ignore.But the one thing you cannot find,the thing you never expectedto be that which you most missis the polychromatic season.For…

    Lou Faber

  • JUST WAITING

    I spend a great deal of time waitingin rooms so namedin lines that never seem to movefor old Godot who still hasn’t arrivedfor the peace and prosperity the politicians love to promisefor the light to change to green when I am running latefor the rain to stop when I want to be outsidefor someone to…

    Lou Faber

  • MORNING

    The clocks have begrudginglyshifted again, the earlymorning lost in darknessbarely illuminated by a waning moon.The fronds of the Royal Palm’swhisper “we are here, waitfor us.” But they are mere shadowsbegging for dawn’s arrival.Finally the sun engulfs the starswatching over the horizon,the fronds say “look at me,I will give you an infinitepalette of green that will…

    Lou Faber

  • A FROSTY RECEPTION

    I truly wish Robert Frost was still aliveso I could ask him where he foundthat yellow wood of his poem.The woods I know are mostly pinein the Adirondacks, or mixed hardwoodsand when autumn arrives they greet itin shades of green, red, orangeochre and yes, some yellow,but hardly enough to givethe forest that titular color.And even…

    Lou Faber

  • COLOURS

    We hunted him as a stagacross his fields, trophywe called him red man,color of Ares, godssacrificed on our altar,his rivers run with his spirit.I am whitebereft of color,barren, a glarea desert stripped of life.It is I who wearCain’s mark, pluckedfrom the gardenthe sweet taste fadesmy lips are dry.You are blackan amalgam, greenof the grasses in…

    Lou Faber

  • SEOUL

    The Han river, gray to greenhinting at mud, but roiledthis day, is a keloid scaracross the torso of Seoul,its suture bridges strugglingto hold the halves together. Soon it will be dark, the Hanthen a no-man’s land, separatingthe two Seouls, each certainit is its own whole, neitherlooking north to an alwaysforeboding step-sibling.

    Lou Faber

  • CHANGES

    The finches are strugglingthis morning, searching the lawnfor the odd clover seed that’s yet to be reduced to dust by a summerwhere the rain has paintedour world with a palette of parchment, ochre, leaving uswandering an increasingly sepia world.  We know that the rains will come again, that nature’s green will return, however briefly, beforewinter encases us all in…

    Lou Faber

  • A PEN FOR YOUR THOUGHTS

    It has a certain heft that says something substantial lies within, waiting to be freed. It glides easily, suggesting an effortlessness you know is a tease, that labor still waits. Still, it does said comfortably, is appealing to the eye, has the deep jade green  along its barrel, the knots interwoven top and bottom that…

    Lou Faber

  • MONOCHROME

    It is an admittedly odd sign of my age that I recall clearly when bathrooms were tiled mostly in monochrome, black and white, and it was a mark of quality when each tile was hexagonal, a hive of ceramic cells, impenetrable. Now tiles are square or rectangular, come in a rainbow of colors, often intermixed…

    Lou Faber

  • GROWING

    Buddha cares little for the endless prostrations preferring Summer. The sun ignores the Buddha and bows to the greening rice. The grass is growing When we are present to watch Without us — growing.

    Lou Faber