More
And of love, in silence
There was more
Than in words, the thousands
Said before
L’ectric Cat
Catch yourself
You dream in
Three (min)
What was that
You L’ectric cat
Unfulfilled
Water in the Wilderness
Excerpt
them the benefit of the doubt. They’re Ruby’s niece and nephew and her children’s cousins, so maybe she does love them, and wants to give them a home.”
For a few minutes they lay silently in the stillness of the house. A faint breeze riffled the curtains at the window, and Tyne felt its cool fingers on her shoulder. The tensions and sadness of the day had been made more oppressive by the heat, and she welcomed the respite of the night.
“We hardly knew the children until two weeks ago,” Morley mused, “which makes me realize we should be more involved with people in the community.”
“But you have been involved, Morley,” Tyne protested. “Look how much you did to get a new hospital in Emblem. And you’re on the Board of Directors.”
“But that doesn’t mean I know what’s going on in families and what their needs are.” He took a deep breath. “I don’t know the answer, Tyne. I just know that, as good Christians and good citizens, we should be more open to the needs of people around us.”
Tyne snuggled her head against his chest. “You’re a good man, Morley Cresswell.” She smiled into the darkness. “You know what? I’ve come to love those kids. Is it possible to become so fond of them in such a short time, or is it a passing phase, like a person becomes infatuated with a member of the opposite sex?”
Morley chuckled. “Ah no, I know what you mean, hon. It’s nothing like infatuation. I’ve fallen in love with them, too.”
“You know,” Tyne said, “I have to confess I was scared to death of them coming here. I didn’t know how to handle kids, and I wasn’t sure I would even like them very much.”
“You’ve done a good job with them, Tyne.”
“Thanks for saying that, honey. But when Rachael yelled at me the other day, saying I’m not her mommy, it really hurt. I wondered where I’d gone wrong.”
Morley’s arm tightened around her. “She’s hurting, and she’s angry. It wasn’t anything you did or didn’t do.”
“I know,” Tyne whispered. “I’m too sensitive.”
Ken Kirkby, A Painter’s Quest for Canada
Excerpt
Ken circled around the stone people, which he later learned were called
Inuksuit. Around and around he walked, occasionally reaching out a hand
to touch them in a dazed kind of wonderment and awe. For the first time
in many weeks, his spirit began to lift.
I thought I was quite a well-informed person on a variety of subjects,
given that in my upbringing, acquiring general knowledge was considered
important. General knowledge led you to being a generalist and it’s the generalists
that run the world so you want to have vast amounts of knowledge
in a variety of areas. So, you learn about the pyramids and the sphinx and
Stonehenge and Easter Island and all of that. But here were these strange
human-like figures made of stone that I had never heard of – and at that
point, I started to come out of my stupor. These figures got a hold of me. This
was something that captured my attention in a major way.
He set up his tent some distance from them, thinking perhaps they
were sacred symbols and while he struggled with his tent, he kept glancing
at the stone men, reluctant to look away even for a moment lest he
lose the magic. With his little tent tamed, and his camp set up on the
windy plain, he dug out one of his rolls of paper – from the depths of
his backpack – and began drawing. He rolled the paper farther after each
drawing and began another. He couldn’t stop; he was infused with the
same energy he had felt when he first began drawing, in Portugal, as a
young boy.
When his stomach let him know he was hungry, he walked down to
the river and caught a fish. Cooking was a challenge because there was so
little wood of any kind to burn. He had learned to start a fire with dried
moss and then add bits of shrubbery to get an intense blaze that lasted
mere minutes. He usually managed to cook one side of the fish over the
flame. Then he had to start a fresh fire to cook the other side. In time, he
learned to eat and enjoy raw fish because it was so much simpler.
While camped near the Inuksuit for several days, making drawing after
drawing, he noticed a group of people setting up camp some distance
from him near the river. The people on the west side of the river didn’t
acknowledge these people on the east side, and they in turn did not speak
to the people on the west bank. Ken concluded that these were Eskimos,
the people he had been searching for.
The Eskimos paid no attention to Ken and he did not try to make
contact. Instead, he continued to draw, fish and cook his meals. He was
consciously becoming a silent person and the deeper he fell into the stillness,
the greater the solace he found.
One day a woman with a deeply lined and weathered face carried some
fish and bannock on a flat stone to Ken’s tent, placed it on the ground and
walked back to her camp. Ken ate gratefully. “How shall I respond?” he
wondered.
Nikos Engonopoulos – Poems
and when I arrive
at the last
step
of this dark
ladder
and I open
the door
of the room
I, then,
sense
that the room
was
is
big
garden
filled with music
and paintings
a room
full of bed sheets
thrown
in the garden
bed sheets
some fluttering
like flags
and like
windowpanes
and others were
thrown down
like mirrors
and others
https://www.amazon.com/dp/1926763734
Jazz with Ella
Excerpt
Jennifer had the feeling she’d been checkmated. He had not been concerned at all about her disappearance—he only wanted to ensure she did more than her part.
“Which students?”
“David needs to develop better written skills. This is a credit course for him, and right now I can’t give him a passing grade. And then there’s Lona. Don’t know what to make of her. She wants a grade for the course, too.” His voice descended to a hush. “I really don’t consider her a serious student.” He hesitated and Jennifer remembered that she was supposed to be finding out Lona’s agenda and reporting back to Chopyk. It didn’t seem very important to her.
They had reached her room, but under no circumstances was Jennifer inviting Chopyk in. “I’ll deal with the students, Professor,” she said abruptly. “Goodnight now.”
He harrumphed by way of comment, bowed, and left her. By the time her head hit the pillow she had already forgotten how irritating he was.
She dreamed a familiar dream. She was hovering over a lake or a pond—sometimes she was in the lake—but this time she floated above it. Her fingernails had unaccountably grown extra long like those of a Chinese mandarin, and she clawed the water searching for the face that she knew would be there. The eyes that stared up at her from among the water weeds were usually familiar eyes—her little brother—and she must save him. She alone could save him. But her outsize talons snarled in the weeds and she could not scoop up the boy. Water trickled through her fingers. And when she gazed into his eyes—now she was closer, inches above the water—she saw not her brother at all, only the blue grey eyes of the attractive stranger, sinking fast.
Swamped
Excerpt
Asians, every kind of European and Latin American, Africans, and
of course the original First Nations people, the victims as Eteo considered
them. The First Nations people whom the ruthless Europeans
of two centuries ago, with their rifles and guns and chicken pox and
diphtheria and polio and alcohol, almost exterminated, slowly and
methodically. The Europeans who came with their tall ships ready to
carry out whatever barbarisms suited their purposes, all while proselytizing,
yes, the Europeans who wanted to turn the First Nations
people into good Christians such as themselves only to exterminate
them tribe after tribe, only to ostracize them clan after clan, only to
enclose them at the peripheries, closely guarded by the always repressive
word or sword, whichever worked best.
Eteo kept walking, now with a fire in his chest. His steps led him
to the familiar dock at the end of 22nd Street. He reached the edge
of the dock and leaned against the framed barrier, letting his gaze
travel over the shiny water. It at least reflected a natural balance, unlike
the human world, its natural balance permeating everything, part
of the balance cosmos has invented and into which even the unbalance
of people blends and gets absorbed. His eyes encompassed the
gleam of the water and the green background on the far side of English
Bay in the university neighbourhood, where more rich Vancouverites
lived, where houses sold in the millions and one wondered
why. Who had induced such lunacy in the housing market while
thousands in East Vancouver were homeless or paying half their meagre
incomes on rent? Whose game was being played in the Lower
Mainland housing market to favor one area against the other?
Eteo let his attention dive into the shallow water under the dock
where small crabs went about their business on the sea floor and the
small perch fed on the barnacles of the dock’s piles. A few starfish
decorated the sandy floor while seaweed floated left and right like
orchestra that a conductor directed its myriad violins in this naturally
balanced world beyond human influence, a balance suddenly interrupted
by his mobile phone. Yannis was ringing him.
“Hello, John.”
“Hi, how are you?” Yannis asked
Wheat Ears – Selected Poems
Metaphors II
Sweet whisper of the grapevine
serene Monday twilight
treacle and cream cheese
impeccable homely blessings
granite and slate limbs of the glyph
in the endlessness of blue sky
yellow wheat fields
dry fallen pine needles, wish
for expected moist
innumerable city lights
the beggar’s empty cup
wind hitting the window shutters
bread hardened on the shelf
glaucous insubordinate sea, abundant
conches and seashells
reddish autumn leaves falling
teardrops of separation
wanderer of plains and hilltops
the darkened fate of innocence
I have been
He Rode Tall
Excerpt
6
was 8500 dollars and the average for geldings was 7300 dollars.
Seven stallions sold for an average of 11,000 dollars, with one
four-year-old stallion going for 35,000 dollars. Top seller for the
day was a twenty-one-year-old palomino mare sold by Joel
Hooper of Willow Springs, Montana, for 75,000 dollars. The
mare is an own daughter of the legendary Doc Bar out of a Peppy
San bred mare and she went to Bud Hankins of Salt Lake City,
Utah . . .”
Did he hear that right?
Did they say 75,000 dollars?
With caffeine-fueled lightening speed that surprised even Joel,
he sprang to his feet, raced for his wallet that he left sitting on the
coffee table and took out the check that he had folded and placed
there as he spoke with Cindy Jones the day before.
“Seventy-five thousand dollars” Joel mouthed to himself. Well
it wasn’t quite 75,000 dollars. Of course, there was the five-percent
commission that had been subtracted, but any way you
counted it the old mare was a 75,000-dollar blonde.
In a stunned zombie-like daze, Joel reached for his
sweat-stained Levi’s jacket and pulled on his Stetson. Calling for
Buddy the Border Collie, Joel headed out the door and up into the
solitude and serenity of the hills. Smiling to himself as he strode
across the yard he couldn’t help but think that with all of the
money he had spent on blondes in his life, the events of yesterday
probably had at least got him a little closer to breaking even.
Breaking even on the ranch and breaking even on blondes.
Manolis Aligizakis 