Imagined-Lives on A Well-Lit-Path

why why why

Sat, 12 Mar 2016 00:00:00 +0000

—Well, where do I begin…? (a pause, studying the wall, the window, the dark corner of the room)

—It doesn’t matter, does it? Everything is in everything else. Just… begin!

—I think you are thinking. Instead: try speaking. Just make a sound. Any sound, then follow sound with sound and before you know it your whole life is laid out here.

Catch

Wed, 03 Jun 2015 00:00:00 +0000

– It’s pulling hard!

– Yes, it’s a big one. Don’t jerk the line, just keep…. wow, yes, just keep hold and bring it in slowly…

The line in the boy’s hands bucking and tugging, this way, that way, desperate to escape the fingers. His expression more determined than seven years of puzzles, seven winters, seven pairs of shoes, seven circles around the sun. A case for karma, the man thought, watching.

Here I am

Thu, 23 Apr 2015 00:00:00 +0000

– Will there be any left?

Stars were falling all around them where they lay, backs against the earth, faces to the sky, in the summer night.

– Stars? Or wishes?

– I have an infinite number of wishes.

– There are an infinite number of stars. Or, at least, there are as many as you can wish in one lifetime.

– I wish, I wish…

– Shhhh, don’t tell or it won’t come true.

There's Your Medicine

Fri, 28 Nov 2014 00:00:00 +0000

Overnight the fog and mist had been met with sudden chill, and every surface, twig and branch, and all the remaining leaves were covered in their contours by a sheet of ice.

– The world is glass, she thought; and she thought: How fragile it seems, as if a clap of thunder would bring it down. But beautiful as it is fragile…

She reached out to a glazed, late-season rose, whose heavy head bowed from the neighbor’s garden, drooping over the fence. She touched it: cold. Is that the look of death, beautifully wrapped in ice?

Windows – 10 (Traveler)

Wed, 15 Oct 2014 00:00:00 +0000

I sat under the rain and the brim of my hat dripped as eaves drip and through the brim of my hat dripping as eaves I watched the leaves handing those drops heaven to earth one palm at a time, as though breaking the water’s fall. I moved under the skirt of the tree and let her shadow me, the arc of the rain drawing an ephemeral circle where the tree’s limbs reached, and stayed there a while, while the large drops collected above, larger and then larger and then falling with a plash unhindered onto the brim of my hat, as though the eaves had shrunk, or the storm had grown.

The fact of a fox

Mon, 15 Sep 2014 00:00:00 +0000

– There! Did you see it? – I don’t… think… over by the water? – No no no, down there (look where I’m pointing). OH! It moved again! – I can barely see your hand.

By now the children had returned from the shore and, having been hushed to quiet, came on exaggerated tip-toes to stand behind their parents. What is it? What is it?

– I think it’s a fox or a mink. – A fox! (stage whisper) – What’s a mink? (the fewer the years, the louder the “whisper”) – Quiet, quiet. There’s a little light between those two trees… it must be coming off the water? And every once in a – there!

the inner ear - 1

Fri, 25 Apr 2014 00:00:00 +0000

“The last year I lived there, I had only a blanket between my self and the deep night, my soul was naked to its maker, and its maker told me stories I could not forget and I could not write; I was filled with darkness and with light, with shapes and with sounds that moved within me, now a stampede, now a flight, then a wind so strong I couldn’t keep my feet…

A Topic of Leisure

Thu, 27 Feb 2014 00:00:00 +0000

The branching of the Arne River is by this hill where its voice grows adult from upstream child, no longer rippling and eager to overflow in this course or that, but gravity-bound for the north and a great flooding finish, a heavy waterfall managed by Verlag dam; were you here to see the ages change? That stone, wider than the rest, severs left from right channel, seems to halve the river while leaving it quite complete, all rush, boiling to be one again; there’s the damage that makes the flow more determined, cuts the deep bed; later on, past three dry fields and under a county bridge, it joins again, but never with this spirit. I watched birds spinning over a pool; I was waiting for wind to blow loose leaves or seeds to turn several times in that water question then head downstream, as everything does. And, listening to a little water over a few stones I imagined a running child, the same light step, or myself in the water, or the water in me; there is sure to be a common language through these things. I would see the ages change, too. Let someone drop a paper boat up by the mill, and we know nothing of the act, but wrapped here in the autumn chill see it float, white and half-capsized, around that bend, over the spill of tangled logs, into the brief frame this view allows – then around again and out of sight forever. So we could be delighted and puzzled for a while, imagine our own fingers bending paper into that shape, how would it feel to be so young, or young-intentioned, and with such faith that two people involved with the current, away downstream would see the boat and know it for a careful gift. Well, someone may yet do that. Or, we may have to be content with sticks and other wood debris that weather slips into the river, a slight downward-casting scene down from treetops, down from hill heights, down the slope of the land, down to the sea.

how they reached for one another

Sat, 07 Jul 2012 00:00:00 +0000

Were I to write an historical novel, I would begin with the letters they wrote one another. Begin with their words of the daily, with a thread of love woven around them, then find the works of art that survived the bullets and the winds of time until today: here is a cross, there a mosque. I would look broader, and look wider, by reading academic works, listening for those that by some miracle of honesty escaped retouching by a political pen, escaped the fundamentalist desire that humanity be excluded fro the story.

We Don't Run

Thu, 07 Jun 2012 00:00:00 +0000

“What was that!”

They were on the river trail, a few minutes’ walk from the town center: far enough out that traffic noise was hushed and self-absorbed, yet near enough in that the bank of the waterway was tended like a garden, perennials were in bloom, annuals in bud, the grass clipped neat and paths swept clean. Comfortable benches had been placed every so often, that couples might rest in public privacy, leaning together, their words becoming soft and intimate, their breath merging as their thoughts merged.

Windows - 9 (Dusk)

Sat, 17 Mar 2012 00:00:00 +0000

Staring at the form for an hour, it seemed (had it been an hour already? her mind had wandered so), and still no decision. She lifted her pen and it wavered over the space for her signature; it did not make mark. She set the pen down again and her hand, free of indecision, cradled her forehead and covered her eyes.

It was yesterday…

… the cherry tree was loaded with fruit, was tall as the sun, and her mother had lifted her so she might sit on a low limb, within reach of the clusters, her flight contained in those arms and in that smile; cherry juice stained her blouse without shame; perfect mother perfect day

Wings

Sat, 10 Mar 2012 00:00:00 +0000

“I don’t see it…!”

“Shh. Just wait.”

The trail they were walking had opened onto a field, out from under heavy-scented pine boughs that dimmed the daylight and hushed the world, from depths to shallows like a river flows into a lake. The change had been so sudden that for a moment the sun had blinded them and, while their eyes were turned down, she saw it. He hadn’t.

She was taller, and years had trained her eyes to look for hidden things. He was four, with much still hidden from him and waiting to be found. She leaned down behind him until her cheek rested against his head, her lips brushing his ear. She nestled her arm against his shoulder, and pointed so that his sight might follow her finger.

Windows - 8 (Avenues)

Mon, 13 Feb 2012 00:00:00 +0000

‎"… and if you lead one, or another, through those pathways to your heart – turning this way and that as they do, confusing as they are, ending sometimes in blind alleys and brief frustrations – will he (or she) find generous rooms, warm with art and soft with cushions, and a table laden for a feast?

“You are the one to guide them: you hold the light. You must meet them on the public avenue with your invitation, you step forward maybe shy maybe hesitant to meet them, ‘Welcome friend! Welcome in…’, and perhaps in your extended hand there is a place to rest and be comforted, or passage to a country they have never seen, or generosity unbidden, to make that strange walk worth taking.

Windows - 7 (Love's Labour Lost)

Tue, 24 Jan 2012 00:00:00 +0000

As he wrapped his fingers round the haft and tightened their grasp, his forearm muscle’s strands united, bound themselves to bone and were, by that movement, married to intention. His fingers felt the weight, and the fiber of the arm responded, hand to wrist to elbow, the arc of his strength raising the sledge again.

The same arm curled around his woman’s waist as they moved together. The same arm caught up his infant daughter, held her warm against his chest. The same arm opened a door; the same arm closed it.

bed of coals

Wed, 21 Dec 2011 00:00:00 +0000

‎"I’m still awake," she sighed.

She stretched so her right foot, at a diagonal and off the bed, reached for the door, while her right arm clutched her pillow tightly to her head. All week long, whispers and pictures reminding her she was not “enough” had been sifting down on her like gray snow, burying her in breathless drifts:

… that man’s leer took her skin and discarded her life; … that magazine’s style soiled her clothes, they could never come clean; … those friends said… those friends and their serial disappointments … media’s mirror “what you’re not… what you’re not…”

ghost-prints

Mon, 02 May 2011 00:00:00 +0000

With the moon still under the Atlantic, there were stars, and neighboring houses whose lone lights flickered between the trees, to light the way. The world was more shadow than path, and the shadows were filled with cricket sounds and other, more furtive, nighttime feet. He squinted from the warmth of the doorway, but could make out nothing. “Better…” he thought, and took the small flash that hung beside the door, to make his way across the field.

midthought

Sat, 16 Apr 2011 00:00:00 +0000

“… but I do begin my sentences mid-thought…” she thought; and thinking about thought was to look in a mirror that reflected another mirror. She was a tunnel of faces that began at her glance, peered around the corner of the glass at another, inner face, and after that a smaller other, and another and other and other. She raised an eyebrow and a million eyebrows rose: “… that might be a tunnel into my soul - but shouldn’t I see a light at the end…”

Fog

Sun, 20 Mar 2011 00:00:00 +0000

He guessed, when he had fully wakened, and the dream’s scenery had begun to melt into the familiar features of his bedroom, that while she had been a major figure in the story, still it was a story, and it was only his.

The impulse was to tell it, of course, as though it had been shared: there are stories where two lay their heads to sleep in separate houses, on separate pillows, but dream as though the pillow were only one, connected by an ethereal thread of sameness or desire. There are stories as well, where two lay their bodies in a single bed, heads on a single pillow, but their spirits are so scattered to opposing winds that, even searching, even calling, they could not hear a whisper of one another. Story or fact.

Burning snow

Thu, 17 Mar 2011 00:00:00 +0000

As I stood under the shower’s spray this evening, allowing the warm water to wash away the day’s dust and travel, I found that as the dirt left me, so did peace and security.

I looked at my hands, and as I passed them along my arms, I suddenly felt an urgency, emergency, imagined I was rushing to remove an invisible poison – radioactive decay – that had collected on my skin and sifted through my clothing, as I sat cowering inside my home, whose chinks and gaps would never be airtight, whose doors and windows were designed to breathe as a human breathes, to move air in and around me so that I might have fresh oxygen to light my blood and to quicken my pulse.

Orpheus

Sat, 05 Mar 2011 00:00:00 +0000

That’s why I sang these songs: the art of writing down my name might call up hers or, reaching the true cause of me (a reason? a meaning?), might find a home, or build one that is why I sang

In evening when light fades you feel it, or in the night where nothing shines but stars that gleam from the far end of the thinnest thread: those strands that catch the corner of your eye and rouse your sounds, widen your smile so song is woven on the melody of her curve, harmony in the curl and moisture of her lips; that is where I sang; and where our voices met we settled in, the sunlight came so every seed we planted surged and opened leaves in sweet upswelling fountain-spilling flowers, fruit, future as though I sang them into life

Outside In

Wed, 23 Feb 2011 00:00:00 +0000

Outside the wind has risen, and here away from town, and near the sea, it seems to have risen with no uncertain fury, so the joints and timbers of the old converted barn that I call home creak and crack (again) like a frail ship on a muscular sea. Was it the louder-than-howling air as it raked the corners of my home… ? Or was it the bold report of an old nail, as it lost its hold and ceded ground in the invisible current’s grip, that shook me and took me out of my dreams? The first assault just brushed the fog of sleep; the second rush illuminated it, a shock of lightning, or the flash of a harbor-light; while the last, most recent, burned it quite away, and left me standing, slightly muddled, softly cursing, wrapping cloth around to warm me at the very deepest bottom of the night.

Our Sound

Sat, 25 Dec 2010 00:00:00 +0000

It’s not who she is that begs the lyric; not what he wants that’s the melody’s thread. Instead: when something stirs and merges one and one; makes failing math, is short two by a half; when boundaries gently blur; when bodies move without one saying stay, one saying go…

There is Music’s spring, if not the spring of everything.

Or, what I mean: it’s where the spirits meet that fuels the fire; it’s where they part that puts it out.

columns

Sat, 20 Nov 2010 00:00:00 +0000

One pillar was just within reach. Stretching her hand, the tips of her fingers ran over the smooth and the rough of the mosaic surface, each square inch of glazed ceramic a work of art in itself, each line of mortar its frame. – If I stood here a month I might see them all, she thought. As though walking the Louvre without walking.

She glanced down the long chamber. The sun was falling, and the far end of the hall was already dark, in the expanse the other columns were like trees, somehow solemn (was that her feeling, written into the dusk?), lifting a painted canopy overhead, lifting history overhead, roots buried in centuries of shuffling feet, branches hidden in an incense haze.

Windows - 5 (interiors)

Sat, 06 Nov 2010 00:00:00 +0000

… at the brow of the hill was a stone wall, a dun crown, and at its heel, a trail; from heel to brow the wander walked, pacing the arc the sun traced in the sky

… at noon, the world stands at height; as if light were a special calling, a luminous gravity pulling heaven- not earth- toward, where all laid low by night’s endeavors are plucked up, tugged on strings and streamers, to momentary magnificence; I… I AM! the shout of every Thing come noon, arises in its native tongue

wealth of tears

Mon, 11 Oct 2010 00:00:00 +0000

She covered her face with her hands as though to stop the tears that flowed, as though to hide her love from the world, as though to keep it from pouring out.

There (she thinks): the equation’s made: a drop of water squeezed from the heart has the same weight as a drop of love.

It’s the physics of desire. It’s the energy of drawing close, it’s the heat of attachment, the matter of bodies and births, the motion of collision and embrace, of merging and deflecting. Watch the ghost-trace particles: bodies find each other and spin away. Yet their energy is conserved: nothing disappears (she thinks): the hum of what is given and received, becomes a song, a sigh, a cry.

Windows - 4

Wed, 29 Sep 2010 00:00:00 +0000

At the sliding glass door she stood, looking at the night. Through her own reflection she could see, in order of diminishing certainty, the branches of a pine, the outline of flowers along the walk (in shades of gray), lawn that faded into the darkness of what she knew to be a road. When she breathed in there was a faint whistling through her nostrils; when she breathed out, her breath fogged the glass in an oval that grew outward, then shrunk on itself, as though its shape were being drawn back into her lungs. The hall tiles were cold. She looked down at her feet.

Windows - 2

Sat, 17 Jul 2010 00:00:00 +0000

Leaning back into the sofa, the leather cushions gave themselves to her head and neck, like two hands receiving, gently laying her down. She drew a full breath, exhaled part of the day, and her limbs relaxed. When I close my eyes, this parade, she thinks. Parade or surrealist painting.

That beautiful girl in my arms, five hours old. Light as impossibility; heavy as my hands rose to meet her. Small as my hands’ cradle; large as my heart’s opening. She crawled inside me and slept there for days and days.

the revolution of darkness

Sun, 22 Mar 2009 00:00:00 +0000

– What if…

She opened a drawer in the kitchen, the one beneath the silver that held everything and nothing, like a purse, and dug about for a moment. She was sure it was there, just the sort of thing she would never throw out, and would never use. Half-empty blocks of twist-ties, a few clothes pins, the dull pair of scissors whose blades were loose, two corks, cheesecloth, three batteries as many years old (she took these in her hand). Her fingers reached deeper than the drawer would open, and aha! found the sticky-soft edge of a candle-stub lined up against the back wall, where the tide of shifting objects had rolled it and left it. She lifted it out, and closed the drawer.

WHAT!?

Tue, 03 Mar 2009 00:00:00 +0000

Someone knocked. It’s 4:30 AM. The entire local Earth is muffled by a foot of snow so even cars (should they pass by) hush by. Every creature sleeps or is silent, winged predation, or a predator’s intent. One of my cats is a small sandbag across my ankle, the nocturnal knocked out of him. The furnace hums, that’s all: almost inaudible, slightly super-liminal drone. Nothing moves, and nearly-nothing makes nearly-no-sound.

Larissa takes the stage

Sun, 21 Dec 2008 00:00:00 +0000

Certain roles warrant mention, and those that play them, however often in the wings, deserve to step forward and take a bow. Once upon a time there was a little girl… not the first girl nor the first time, but let us say the first this time ‘round. The first First Tooth, the first one following; the first one loose, the first one falling. And what does that mean? Is a fallen tooth like a fallen leaf? Is it a hole that lets a whistle through? A space for a straw (for now)?

plucked

Tue, 01 Jul 2008 00:00:00 +0000

“No; no, please; no more.” Art stretches on the canvas, the sun fallen half-way round the sky, having sweated its way to zenith, now drying and diminishing toward the end of its day, the end.

“But why? I thought the work was just beginning? I thought: a little more color, how it changes from morning to noon (when the light is really too terribly flattening, don’t you agree?), and now again from noon to night, when it picks up a… poignancy… that almost causes fruit to ripen…”