an old writer and his words

  • 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

  • STOP WORRYING

    Last month a snakecrawled up our downspouttrying to find shade orjust a place for an afternoon nap.I took his picture, askedan app what he wasand the app answered.The snake said “youcould have asked me,and I would have told youmy name is Hector,but all you cared aboutwas what species I was.It is always that waywith your…

    Lou Faber

  • CASTLES

    Standing along the stone fencein the late afternoon shadowof Auchnanure Castle, as friendsmade their way up the narrowstone stairs to gaze out overthe Irish field in which we stood.We watched horses in the adjacent fielddash wildly toward us as if saying“damn the old stones, here is the photofor which you came to Ireland.” Orsaying “let…

    Lou Faber

  • JUST STOP

    Stop what you are doing,put down your devices,turn off whatever you are streamingand look around you.Take careful note of what you see,inventory it if you wish.Now use your mind is a Time Machineimagine yourself right heretwo hundred, then four hundredand then a thousand years ago.What do you see? How is that worlddifferent from this one?…

    Lou Faber

  • NIGHT AT THE ALLUSIVE TAVERN

    He had been sitting there for hours, days,how many “last calls” had he heard?He watched Beckett and Eliot come and gobut he sat waiting, patiently, no Godot for him.He had long since lost his now empty pen,his pockets grown stuffed with damp cocktailnapkins, the story of his life bleeding slowlyinto the worn fabric of the…

    Lou Faber

  • LUNA WAITS

    Awake in the middle of the nightat an undetermined hour,the analog clock invisiblein the darkened bedroom,I glanced out between the slatsof the window shade and watchthe waning moon play hideand seek with clouds that promiseneeded rain and then decidedwe weren’t worthy of their effort.Mars sat nearby doing nothing,that itself a commentary of sorts.I crawled back…

    Lou Faber

  • TIME IS DUE

    Why must everything happen in due time? That is what he wanted to know. He understood things having a due date. That was a certainty if you accepted the calendar. But what was a due time? Time was a construct, a measuring system, seconds, minutes, hours, all neatly divided so you could identify any single…

    Lou Faber

  • NONFAT CORTADO

    There was a time when Iwould steal away for an hourand sit in the corner of my favoritecoffee shop, watching people.There would always be students,fidgeting in a hurry to besomewhere for which they are latebut dare not face uncaffeinated.There was an older man,his white and gray hair an absurdversion of the Friars of old,the man…

    Lou Faber

  • BENT ARROW

    He would never understand how time developed a flexibility that defied the laws of physics. An hour, a minute, a second, they were all standard measures. Each the same as every other. Yet lately they had changed, flexed. For the most part they had gotten shorter, shrunken. He knew that wasn’t possible until he remembered…

    Lou Faber

  • WORKSHOP

    Grace settles into the chair,less an act of sitting thanof floating down onto the seat.She has borrowed my grandmother’ssmile, kind, gentle, inviting.She pulls a book from her bag,its pages or most of themdog eared, and I glimpsesome annotations in the margins.We sit around her like childrenawaiting presents on a holiday,as acolytes seeking knowledgefrom a font…

    Lou Faber