an old writer and his words

  • ONE DAY

    We stood trapped betweenslack-jawed and reverentlooking at the woman sittingcross-legged outside the doorwaylovingly fashioning a pot,her gnarled fingers gentleon the yielding clay. Others this day fashionedrings and pendantssimple tools on silverand one of a kind treasuresthey would lay outon blankets hoping wewould want morethan just a photograph. Our day on the Taos Puebloended too early,…

    Lou Faber

  • PUEBLO CHRISTMAS

    The night is that bitter cold that slices easily through nylon and Polartec, makes child’s play of fleece and denim. The small rooms glow in the dim radiance of propane lights and heaters as the silver is carefully packed away in plastic tool boxes. The pinyon wood is neatly stacked in forty pyres, some little…

    Lou Faber

  • COYOTE SONG

    Down at the butt end of the arroyo is a pond, an aneurysm in the stream that runs down from the mountains for better than a month each spring. The twisted, gnarled mesquite cluster around it, like children gazing at a corpse in utter fascination who dare not approach lest it become real and touch…

    Lou Faber

  • ON THE MESA

    I sit outside, on the mesa, having watched the mauve, fuchsia and coral sky finally concede to night. The two orange orbs sit twenty yards away, staring back and in this moment coyote and I have known each other for moments, for generations, and we are content. Coyote tells me he was once an elder living…

    Lou Faber

  • THE MESA, MIDNIGHT

    The coyotes come down from the Sandia Hills onto the mesa.  They are not spirits.  They are not totems.  They are not tricksters.  They are hungry: for a jackrabbit, for a bird, for a small dog wandering too far from a half-lit earthship.  They smell the sage, its faint odor carried on the night breeze. …

    Lou Faber