an old writer and his words

  • SEASONINGS (HAIKU)

      above only sky beneath only dark gray clouds the sun is content a mountain of clouds rises from white tufted bed the earth is watered in winter’s icy chill ripples from autumn’s pebble await the spring sun the leafless ginkgo taunts the first snow of winter with the dream of spring

    Lou Faber

  • MORNING SONG (AWDL GYWYDD)

    The sun creeps down city streets,  dew retreats from the grasses and fills the air, with sweet scent until spent, the bus passes. The robin sits in the tree as worms flee into the lawn. The morning foretells the rain that will slowly drain the dawn. The city quietly wakes and stretching, shakes off the…

    Lou Faber

  • MARCH APPROACHING (HAIKU)

    Winter dies slowly under the jay’s watchful eye harbinger of spring. The ghosts of winter hide behind the Sun, the hawk hears them. Frail pink petals fall onto slowly warming earth the winter concedes.

    Lou Faber

  • REVERY

    Seen from a great distance the rowboat is a speck on a lake which appears far more like an oversized pond. You are so far off you cannot see if there is a person in the boat or it is merely floating about free of its mooring, imagining itself a water-lily basking in the midday…

    Lou Faber

  • FLORIDA, JANUARY (2 HAIKU & A TANKA)

    In southern winter odd-shaped and ungainly birds fly in gracefully. The egret peers in and we peer right back at him Florida morning. Alligator lies still in the afternoon sun ignoring the birds and just imagines himself lying in the mid-day sun.

    Lou Faber

  • A SOUTHERN WINTER (HAIKU)

    In the dark of night clouds gavotte across the sky we awake to rain There is no snow here – we dream of Fujiyama imagine winter. A thousand cranes rise take wing over the city smiling at the sun.

    Lou Faber

  • BACKSTREET TEMPLE

    The afternoon sun glares off the polished roof tiles the bells strung on the pagoda of the small temple tinkle in the wind. There are so few birds in Osaka. First Appeared in Japanophile, Vol. 24, No. 1, 2000.

    Lou Faber

  • ANCIENT HISTORY

    He asked her what she did, and the question surprised her. Most didn’t ask that until much later on, but she replied, “I am a historian.” He said, “Isn’t that an odd profession,” quickly adding, “and I don’t mean for a woman.” “It is,” she smiled, “but I fell in love with history as a…

    Lou Faber

  • IN ABSENCE

    The dawn failed to appear this morning. There was a slight lightening of the sky, more a change of grayscale shade that a shift in time-honored by the sun. The crows seemed to notice, why else would they stay silent, so unlike most days when the first rays of sun were the call to take…

    Lou Faber

  • SLOW TIME

    Time slows inexorably with the approach of sleep, the other world prepared for arrival as the awakened world falls away into ashes. Some say it is all dreams, but they have their own reality until they, too, retreat in the face of the great rising Bird that precedes the morning sun.

    Lou Faber