an old writer and his words

  • SITTING SHIVA

    The sitting of  Shiva is a tribal right performed with Kaddish and coffeecake. The mourning is harder for the adult child, for the now severed bond grows with time and not distance, and there comes a point where the loss invokes your mortality. Tonight we all speak of the departed off on a journey we never…

    Lou Faber

  • THE WATCHER

    He stands transfixed on the bridge, arms outstretched, staring at the river always flowing slowly by below. He wears a garland of gold, an inscription in Hebrew, the holiest of holies, mocking those who hold him a man. Did he peer out of the corner of his eyes as they marched them across the bridge…

    Lou Faber

  • SHE SAID

    She said that we are little more than clay to be molded by God and carved by fate and we count on nothing more than this day. It’s but a week since she has slipped away, we expect our sense of loss to abate. She said that we were little more than clay, just so…

    Lou Faber

  • CRYING

    There is  a tear in God’s eye, the blood of the children of Aleppo.

    Lou Faber

  • MOURNING ASCENDANT

    When they lowered my grandmother’s casket into the sodden earth, there wasn’t a dry eye or shoulder, or leg around. Sophie would have gotten a good laugh, her children always too busy for a visit getting soaked to the skin, in a cold, windy downpour, all but me, the one she chose to conduct the…

    Lou Faber

  • AND WHAT IS LEFT BEHIND

    She calls them around her bedside but they stand back fearful of the withered ghost hovering on the sheets, until one, eldest, touches her extended hand with a finger as if passed through a flame. I will be leaving soon she tells them, if not tomorrow then a day later and I will take the…

    Lou Faber

  • FROM BEYOND

    “Call your mother,” she says. She speaks in the voice of my mother. It grates on my nerves in just the same way it always did. I listen carefully. She repeats herself.  I reminded her that she died two years ago. I tell her I tried to call for months after her passing, but there…

    Lou Faber

  • IN MEMORIUM: NAMELESS ONE

    My muse drowned in a torrent of words. I buried her on page 243 of War and Peace. Kafka read the eulogy, while Ferlinghetti dozed in the third pew. I sat Shiva for a week and the guests brought endless casseroles of Westlake, Cornwell and Kellerman. I waited for Ondaatje to sooth my grief, but…

    Lou Faber