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…
We didn't know he was dead until after the Gala was over. It was a small college-town fundraiser for the Opera Association, and it was held on the stage of the college theater – on the stage itself, so that we could see the control booth, located at the rear of the auditorium, up where…
Talk floats. Rain covers the windows. We're driving north to show Mount Vernon To my mother-in-law and her niece, Mary. In the back seat Minnie and Mary sigh As both of them recall Miss Ambrose Who died at ninety-five last summer. Mary is sixty, short and diabetic. Minnie is seventy-four, her memory sharp. Miss Ambrose…
I almost died last night eating shrimp. That's how they diagnosed it at Mount Auburn Emergency after they'd shot me full of adrenalin. My heart fluttered, I couldn't keep my hands still, and I laughed and cried like a crazy person, my face swollen with hives, my throat closing. “I don't look like this,” I…
Fenton plugged in the coffee maker, primed and loaded the night before, then went to the front door to get the paper. The sun was up above the Patterson's garage, and the newspaper had landed on the top step, neatly folded and tucked. Fenton stood and smelled the air. Through the bathroom window on the…
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