Keys
Worthless shards of serrated metal, ground to keep valuables secure, like Tutankhamun’s tomb, liquor on the Titanic or cars from ever being stolen. There’s one for your heart. Unless you leave it open. ♥
Antikythera
In the year 1901 on the floor of the Aegean Sea a diver found the lump of something unimaginable, unthinkable, unfathomable, an intricate mechanism indistinguishable from anything of value until technology revealed the workings of a complex mechanical computer capable of predicting with perfect accuracy the swirling of the cosmos, the relative position of stars…
Ukraine
I saw them through the open window. Spring brought them to my life and I felt life within me. A flight of geese pounding through the air breasts beating, hearts honking, wings cleaving all eternity toward me as I stood astonished and rushed outdoors to cheer them on their way. Winter came. The house burned.…
Pair of Queens
Although I have a fine sensibility for tradition, honor and luxury, I make a choice, having seen two queens approaching their respective one hundredth birthdays. One in a palace with a crown, surrounded by pomp and circumstance, protected and revered and another wearing a babushka in a damp cellar hiding from the bombs, illuminated by…
The Strongest Man In Poland
I will write this without amendation or revision. It comes from the heart. When I think of my family, when I think of the past I think of what I have been told and what I remember. I don’t research, but I believe and I know what I know from those I loved and one…
Matriculation
What you do is send your soul off to school. You know the day will come. You dread it in a way, selfishly wanting the child to stay at home, but you know there comes a time. So all neatly dressed and ready as you’ll ever be, shoes without a scuff, Big Chief pad, two…
Endurance
In 1915 the ship Endurance of the Earnest Shackleton expedition to Antarctica became trapped and sank in the pack ice of the Weddell Sea. Shackleton’s men abandoned ship and began a 350 mile trek across ice and open water pulling and rowing their lifeboats to Elephant Island. It took them over two months. When they…
I Saw Wonderful Things
Once I drove a school bus in Iowa. Quite a few times, actually, over a number of years. Out in the wild, wide places of time and place long, long ago and I had four little boys who rode my bus. The Vlegers. Their last name was Vleger as I recall and cannot forget and…
Florentino
There is a man who places linen and silverware on tables. He places linen and silverware on tables. That is what he does where people sit and eat. They spoil the linen and soil the silverware and they leave. This man removes once crisp linen and not too long ago spotless silverware and once again…
Titanic
Remember all those throes upon the slanting deck. Place yourself where you are placed by destiny and behold the craven acts of others, the heroics of some and take your measure upon the stage about to sink beneath your feet. Strike out, survive and live to tell what life meant when life sank unsinkable below…