November 9, 1981 Late Monday afternoon It is not yet 5 p.m. now and already near to completely dark, just the sky is still that deep dark blue just before it becomes black. Much to write about, though I have been avoiding sitting down here. What first? The good news or the bad? Last Tuesday…
A solitary apartment house, the last one before the boulevard ends and a bricked road winds its slow way out of town. On the third floor through the dusty windows Karen beholds the elegant couples walking arm in arm in the public park. It is Saturday afternoon, and she is waiting for a particular young…
The yarn pulled diagonally over neighboring threads in time might equal the sheen on a bird's feather, a flower petal's tip, or some corner of sky. As far back as I remember, she was never without some neutral canvas, rectangle, circle, square, her hands having chosen the continental, basket-weave, or half-stitch. I watched to see…
A group of us were sitting around trying to think of nice things to say about my grandfather. He had died at ten o'clock that morning. So there we all were, gathered in my parents' living room. There was my mother, of course, She was Grandpa Jack's eldest child. And my father. And my mother's…
Before I could tell time, I'd sit and wait For the cuckoo in my mother's wooden clock To open his red door, and sing “cuckoo.” I never knew how many times he'd sing, But the song was regular, and a long trill Gave me a chance to look inside his house Where it was dark…
Low tide along this oceanfront there are the usual chipped conchs, angel wings, atlantic augers spiraling to pintips, and occasionally, beyond the sea wrack or tangled in it, a perfect starfish. Rainbowed donax burrow at the water's edge, moving beneath the surface like slippers. Some escape the sandpipers which scatter when we head south toward…
On a spring day in 1945, not long before his 12th birthday, Bud Gardner headed out to plow his father's fields. His younger brother Gilbert came along for the ride. Sandy, the boys' sister, lingered within earshot. Gilbert climbed on the cultpacker, a two ton machine which, towed in the tractor's wake, crushed the freshly…
I was dressed to be a man With saggy hose and doublet, A sword belt, a sword, And a cap with a ragged feather Over my pinned-up hair. I had no lines to speak. We lords and gentlemen Standing around in silence, Cued to swell a progress, Were played by tall girls. The short girls…
Our guide has built our hopes up. He claims Recife is the Venice of Brazil. Nothing so far in the state of Pernambuco equals the Grand Canal or the Doge's Palace. Where are the gondolas and glassblowers? Our guide insists. He drives us over “Venetian-like” bridges, and each bridge leads to a Moorish church on…
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