In the memory, he was six. Maybe five, maybe seven. But it wasn't a memory he'd invited; it had stepped up to him as unexpectedly and indifferently as – as what? The thought faltered. Here was the memory in any event, so clear because it was unsolicited; it hung before him as detached as the…
Bassoon and pizzicato, Franz Joseph Haydn’s “Clock”, horses at full run. Adagio; Presto; more an ending to a year than a beginning of a symphony. A flute — the big time piece becomes a tiny musical clock, a gift, a minuet for Prince Esterhazy in 1793. The finale is a double fugue. The first three…
1. Salmo gardneri, mercurially quick in a thin silverfoil fish-oilskin slicker, rash of rainbow raked along the sides, on a whiplash tack perpetually, tunneling through a headstream waterwall; then sinking down to dredge among the drowsing instars, silt, threaded algae, green-gelled light; planing up past clumps and globes of bubbles, a hovel stuccoed in pearls,…
It was as if he took all his springs and summers, falls and winters, and lived each in one dose. They no longer brought, like salesmen, again and again, their samples of fruit and leaves. They stretched through years. They claimed their territory. He was born into fifteen years of alert cold. Knowing nothing but…
Susan Sontag is down in New York City tonight writing and she wants to explain something to you. She has it sort of figured out, or part of it, and she would like to set it straight for you. William Gass is out in St. Louis thinking and he has a series of connections between…
Feeding the Birds Lured by unnatural feeding, by promises of plenty lavishly sprinkled and arced and scattered on cold weather, even the tufted titmouse has recently been known to loiter in the north here into winter. To feed or not to feed? The weather lady is careful, subtle, non-committal, anxious: “I’m sure more studies must…
for my Grandmother Nobody troubled you that last night, no one came. No daughter visited whose unrelenting care accused you of your deep need to have her there: child now to your own child, only your needling her (she could do nothing right) kept clenched your pride, yet left you needing her that much more….
The wolf discovers his fur is changing: gone flat now, sleek as sealskin. Once grey, now hazel, his gaze holds past territory, past food to memory and meeting. A giraffe he approaches stares before bolting. Shrills of alarm through the jungle. He deserts the ancestors’ feeding ground. He grazes now, like another, calmer species. At…
Made a fool of. She rose to that. She would not be made a fool of. She looked down at the tennis court. She couldn't hear any of their noises through the window. The girl was good, played like a man, concentrating, sweating. Coiled for her backhand. Whipped it across with top spin. He had…
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