Simpatico
This word has the splendid eyes of Sojourner Truth. Its heart is a tiger lily. Its tears smell like orange blossoms. It was conceived in a Shinto temple. Its parents are Bilbo Baggins and Mary Poppins. This word is a concerto in E flat. Passion...
Read MoreElectricity’s Ghost
By 1966 I still hadn’t read a book, thought history was for dead people, math for those who didn’t count, and that there were three sexes: men, women, and nuns. And now, for Junior year, the worst of the worst: Sister Johanna would engineer English, slap down Speech, and herd us into Home Room where, one day, she’d tell my friend, Paul, that he wasn’t worth the postage it would take to send him out of the country. All summer I listened to Dylan’s “Visions of Johanna” for guidance but learned only that the “ghost of electricity howls in the bones of her...
Read MoreFather John Clermont’s Hands
His hoary hands hang like fish. Unexpressed, they fall from his wrists like lake pike caught and up strung with lidless staring eyes aft hung. Unaware with his lifeless extremities, of the shook light bursting by degrees of epidermal hemorrhage of bright and shine squinting through pores and life lines; A miasmal kaleidoscope of forgotten tales; of hands healing and soothing others’ travails; of Christ’s use of John’s hands to bless God’s folk; raised a thousand times to lighten their yoke. His hands, swollen with years and a bit stiff with age, still...
Read MoreOn the Limbic Art of Time
For Liberty This three-month wheaten cairn’s old soul whose middle name might be Cajole has sniffed out all my tick-tock past. She’s stopped the clock. Time’s far surpassed by all she does to entertain — to coach my heart and limbic brain — with capers played throughout the day at which I am her protégé. Passion...
Read MoreCherry Picking
Two cherries, dimpled and cleft, bright red, in a wishbone hanging. Pick them, pick them not. Transfixing beauty of a 1920s Italian aperitif ad, lovers joined over a cool summer Campari. But most are lonely, single, ripe, waiting. Pick the low ones first, they are easy. The proud ones, mature crimson, at the top of the tree, leave for the blue jays who only come one at a time and don’t take much. Passion...
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