One Letter
There is no Art, nor is there Life. No loss, no gain, no us, no them. All our categories and labels, divisions and distinctions, are merely linguistic – letters with no more meaning than the letter “I.”
Once I had a Hero
Only once have I carried a rifle in public, for a 6th grade school play about the pioneers, my father’s World War II carbine an essential prop. After school, when I got into the way back of a neighbor’s station wagon, pointing that gun out the rear window, I already felt strange. Then she told […]
POPS
One pistol shot changed his life, but not how you think. Only 11, gun from Mama’s lover stuck in his shirt, celebrating New Years Eve shooting into the air, a poor man’s pleasure long before civic fireworks. Showing off for the other kids, your shot, of all the gleeful noise down the streets, your shot […]
Year-end Inventory
No winter peace, the small retailer sweeps aside the chaos of Christmas sales, revealing too many to count New Years Day, and pay tax April 15. Scratch and dent, forsaken, or mistakes needing resolution, all echo my emotional inventory, foibles and triumphs both caused residue far beyond the corner cobwebs. Too late for the clearance […]
Sunday Elephant
Across the watering hole from us humans, African elephant scoops hay with relaxed trunk, sweeping the ground near feet, no need to look, letting sweet aromas guide the nonchalant motion. More purposed coiling up to the mouth, right back down to continue the forage. Tail sweeps sideways in a slower rhythm, not to chase flies […]
Lure
There is no love there is only love brain as cleaver slices into scientific categories sensations that infiltrate so deep I do not even sniff them until new allurements rule my world. Denial is futile – there is only love.
Bella
Oh for that Brindle coat and Mastiff jaws so joyfully flinging a plush toy left right left right fwapping herself so fast I marveled at how this Boston Terrier did not scramble her brain. And now she’s gone of a brain tumor. How much joy do I clench in my jaws and shake myself silly, […]
Last Year
Last year I smiled at the honeybees as they went about their work, all buzz and hover along a wall of sweetness. This year I stare at lonely blossoms on a silent sun strewn wall and try to convince myself that they will come back.
Nanticoke1926
My mother at home in Nanticoke, Pennsylvania Dust of the coal mines on the window sill lightened to gray by a gentle snow, our simple clapboard house also freshened from within by the exotic smell of oranges, a seeming miracle delivered only at the holidays from some far off land, an extravagant purchase that triumphantly […]
Siren Chord
Morning rung to attention by distant train horn beckoning me like an iron bell to a churchgoer. Ears pass the call inside, stomach rumbles for new roads, nose hungry for scraping steel. My feet’s rhythm quickens, the louder tones now clear – five penetrating notes stacked up in extravagant harmony, complete yet open, pleasing yet […]