weekly muse...
volume 1, issue 20 | 2022-11-17
poetry
sunflower
ancient egypt worshiped a different god dependent as they were on crops and flooding even here in these days she lifts my head like a sunflower to face her slanting rays
-- from homebound
summer wind
treetops sway like a gospel choir the wind slips through bent limbs crisp leaves clapping in the breeze
-- from along the way
iraq war photo
side of face hacked off by shrapnel like a shell scram- bled brain on a half- skull raw you can’t make history without breaking eggs
-- from everything rhymes
winter night
-- for robert frost, on a snowy evening – reverie – stepping away from the house for a deeper view of black night sky its blinking stars adrift in space a billion galaxies of body dust reclaim my bones in tenuous rays of seeping light – return – but space is cold and empty dark and vast against my skin a yellow light in the window calls me in to slip inside my life again and warm myself by the fire
-- from lives of the poets
summer breeze
cool breezes cut through summer heat like a welding arc tears apart a sealed metal door another day -- from another day
short stories
wedding plans
…continued
December 1995, Escape to Mexico
The rented RV trundled along the narrow ribbon of Baja highway with Bob gripping the wheel. Ren sat in the passenger seat soaking in the stark beauty of the rocks, cacti, sand, and boulders of this mountainous desert. A narrow strip of land jutting down from southern California and ending abruptly with the Pacific Ocean on three sides like some highway spur that was never finished due to lack of funding or political squabbles. Isolated like her, riding shotgun along the western coast of Mexico, as much apart from its own country as from ours. A no man's land.
Cissie inhabited the back of the vehicle like some life-size traveling dollhouse she got as a Christmas gift. Complete with VCR, stereo, kitchenette and shower. Everything a teenage girl could want (except for a phone).
Marie and Robert were touring in Europe. They were getting married in the spring. This is why they were spending Christmas and New Year in the Baja. Bob could not bear the thought of the family being at home for the holidays without Marie.
She asked him if it was okay. “Oh, Dad, we'll miss going out on the ice.”
“That's OK, M. There'll be other years.” They both wondered if there would.
Bob determined the rest of the family was going to spend the Christmas holidays out west. From the closing bell at school to the last day of the vacation. The whole family (except for Marie). They would fly in and out of San Diego. Drive down into Mexico for some warm sunshine. Visit the San Diego Zoo and Sea World.
As things turned out, Leo and Marty ended up staying home to participate in wrestling and basketball tournaments. But, it did not matter by then. The essence of his plan was still intact. To get out of the house. There would be no missing place in their circle that year. Even if it meant there would be no circle.
Driving the Baja was an adventure in itself. Made all the more tense when lumbering along in an oversized vehicle formed by the unnatural crossing of the body of a house trailer with the chassis of a pickup truck, like some kind of cumbersome mechanical answer to the mule. Narrow asphalt roads were hacked into mountainside cliffs with sheer drops unmarked by any guardrails. Rusted hulls of fallen vehicles came to rest in the valleys below in silent warning to the naive travelers above. Homemade shrines of wooden crosses, flowers, and ribbons dotted the sides of the roads like mile markers in silent tribute to the fallen. The pavement gave way every now and then to unannounced washes where hungry valleys and ravines had reclaimed the roads. And, most unnerving of all, the occasional approach of an oncoming truck or bus, with a local driver who had no fear of the valleys, the cliffs, or the roadside graves.
At the end of the second day of driving, the three of them relaxed with rented videos in the RV's VCR. Ren and Cissie both wanted to watch The Father of the Bride, the modern version. Bob never particularly cared for this movie. Neither the original nor the remake. He simply did not like the characters. They were too rich and spoiled. Their supposed problems too petty for his tastes.
Toward the end of the movie, Ren and Cissie heard Bob crying as he lay in his perch on the foldout bench at the back of the cabin.
Cissie was confused. “Dad, are you crying?”
Ren answered for him. “You really miss her don't you?”
He could only nod in agreement. More tears spilled with each up and down pitch of his head, as if they leaked from gaping holes in the walls of a rusted out bucket. Cissie fed bales of tissue to him. Amused and comforted that he could love her big sister so much. Sensing somehow that this affluence of fatherly care extended also to her.
-- to be continued...
-- from signs & wonders
lucy (losing the light)
…continued
“So, you still didn’t tell me.” Now, we had three purple plastic laundry baskets stacked in the back seat, along with the Occupational Outlook manual, my black camera bag, my brown waitress apron with yellow pinstripes, three plastic bags of groceries, and a pile of white linen tablecloths.
“What’s that?” He tossed back.
“About retiring. Why will you stop teaching?”
He rested his sad brown eyes on me. “My eyes.” Then, he turned away.
“I’m sorry to hear that.” I didn’t know what else to say.
“Macular degeneration.” He turned to me again. “They’ve lost their ability to focus.” He grinned with doleful irony. “Funny, huh?”
“Can’t they fix it?”
“No treatment. No cure. It just happens.”
“So, will you go blind?” I hesitated to ask.
“No one knows. The prognosis is different for everyone.” He shrugged. “I still have peripheral vision, but the center is blurred. No depth of field. I blew out my f-stop.” He snickered. “Like an athlete with his knee.”
I drove on in silence toward the church. I felt bad, like I had caused the disease, like it wasn’t there until I brought it up. I thought of Beethoven, finishing his symphony after he went deaf, but decided not to mention it. I hated it when my parents encouraged me like that. It always felt like a veiled insult beneath the inspiration.
We drove past a narrow patch of open field. It looked ready, waiting for us to plant more houses, plow more roads. This was all fertile farmland once, when I was a child. It was vanishing fast. I looked at the dry brown grass wilting in the summer heat. He looked out the window too. I wondered. What does he see?
-- to be continued...
-- from summer’s end
microfiction | a history of the world
…continued
football (total abandon)
The ball snaps. Stillness explodes. Pure action. Absence of thought. Bodies crash in plastic cases with loud smacks. Chalk and jerseys. Mud and grass.
There is no future. There is no past. Nothing else in the world. There is only the task. Not even a name. Block and tackle. Run and pass. Hit hard! With all you’ve got. The ground is a sure foundation. It will not last.
When the play stops, a whistle blows. Bodies pick themselves up. Like bones. Then go back to do it again. This game! As long as it lasts.
-- to be continued…
-- from a history of the world