an old writer and his words

  • PLATFORM

    They said it was essential for a writer to have a substantial platform, one built high enough to be easily seen by those passersby who might just give a passing glance, even if it was a typo landed them here, updated, regularly changing with time, tide, and fashion always ready, always accommodating. It must be…

    Lou Faber

  • DISCONCERT

    The crows are disconcerted this morning. It could be that the sun startled them or that they were simply  present to protest the cold for clearly they despise it as much as we do.

    Lou Faber

  • DRAPERY

    It was draped over the fence, a bridge for squirrels who would otherwise would go through the chain. There’s a sadness to its needles, many burying themselves in the accumulated snow, cast off by the great Spruce as extraneous, an old coneless branch, “that is the reason” the trunk whispers in the wind “why I…

    Lou Faber

  • POLI SCIENCE

    She isn’t used to the cold, she never will be, and she hates it with the sort of passion she once reserved for people of a different political philosophy than hers. She grew up here, but she left. She has never regretted the departure. She visits only in late spring or in the heart of…

    Lou Faber

  • SENTINEL

    The streetlight is a nocturnal Sentinel staring down. In some cities in other parts of this it could tell of the cries of drunks stumbling from closing bars, ambulances flashing in its cast shadows. On the street with sleeping homes it tells only of the snow that cradles its base.

    Lou Faber

  • STEPSISTERS

    Perhaps tonight the slightly waning moon will bathe us in her presence. That presupposes the clouds, so very jealous of late, allow her to appear. They, and the unending winter, are the evil stepsisters, and they have neither justice nor compassion for the moon or for us. And so, to save their maleficent case, I…

    Lou Faber

  • THIN ICE

    When we were much younger we would meet by the edge of the pond each day after winter’s first taste and pry rocks from the bank with frozen fingers, one the size of a fist, others even larger. We would carefully aim and in a crystal parabola watch as they hit the frozen surface, one…

    Lou Faber

  • WINTER, AGAIN

    The snow began falling this morning the dry, almost greasy snow that defies the plows running up and down the streets, too shallow for the salters to begin. Cars slide to a stop, or nearly so, at the intersection, and you know it is merely a matter of time before two will simultaneously, and there…

    Lou Faber

  • ENVELOPING

    The night wraps us in the faint light of the glowing moon. The snow falls, reflected in the street light’s glow, and settles on the snow fields of recent days that obscure the earth that suffers beneath. We will flee tomorrow and leave the snow in our wake, hoping that on our return a week…

    Lou Faber

  • FALLS

    The water pours endlessly, relentlessly over the lip, cascading into the gorge the mist rising, engulfing the rim of the falls, swallowing whole the small island, that will be eaten by the river over the next centuries. We sit in the comfort of our room, watching as if this was a movie, the water in…

    Lou Faber