Father, you don’t need to ask how long it’s been since my last confession. You know and I know the truth. It’s been a week. But what a week, Father! Does it involve another trip to that place? Yes, it does. But a lot more than that Father. And that woman? Yes, she makes another appearance. Probably her last though. I really think I’ve managed to get her out of my system this time. It didn’t involve too much sinning. Just a little. Which is why I’m here.
It starts with my Uncle Errol. I’m not blaming him. He just happens to live near that place. Yes, Father, the San Sussy. Not to be confused with the Sugar Bunker next door. I’m not good enough to go there.… ...continue reading
“Their pallid, subterranean ways,”
the chapter in the botany book begins,
“make them incomprehensible.”
It continues, though, by expounding
on the contrary, the common
sensibleness of their jobs – to anchor
the plant in soil, absorb water
and minerals, store food. The narrative
continues with more technical matters,
never to follow up on the enigmatic
opening line. Or maybe the author,
a many-degreed botanist, was suggesting
an alternate realm of meaning, or lack
thereof, divorced from roots’ habitual work.
But it struck a chord with me, for how
can we but be in the dark about roots
in the earth, burrowing, spreading?
Deep or shallow, they are too deep for us
to follow where they lead. There is no sense
seeking full disclosure, for what replies
they grudgingly may offer would bear little
resemblance, at bottom, to the unrevealable
truth, no matter our bootless digging.… ...continue reading
July 2017. As we depart from O’Cebreiro and enter the forest that wends down into the Navia Valley, Lou casts her daily intention into the dimming stars.
“Today I walk for my mom,” she declares into the darkness.
S. and I acknowledge it silently as Lou’s mom materializes in my mind. If it is the village that raises the child, she is in every sense my auntie, my elder, my second mother. On the cusp of her retirement in January she had received an initial diagnosis of cancer, but the prognosis was only confirmed a week before Lou left to join me—her cancer is endemic. Chemotherapy will prolong her life, but never save it.
I look up through the dark arms of the Evergreen Oaks and Portuguese Oaks, marveling at the silent intelligence of the trees. … ...continue reading
I remember as a young girl when it was possible to behold a million stars at night, now I’m lucky if I observe only six at any given time. But that was then, when I lived far away by the sea and the stars burst throughout the cosmos as far as the eye could see. Now I live the city dweller’s lot, with artificial light impairing my view of the universe. Excessive use of manufactured luster with polluting glare, skyglow, trespass and clutter shifts my attention is shifted towards a neighbor when lights are on and shadows are no longer cast. I see them roving about and I wonder what goes on behind their walls where I cannot hear their words or sense their thoughts.
For instance, the family next door in the apartment facing my kitchen window.… ...continue reading
In the narrow space between the side edge
of the granite bathroom vanity and the wall,
a speck of a red spider built a tight web
that trapped no more, it seemed to me,
than puffs of talc, soap bubbles, moustache
hair. Catching sense of my looming shadow,
it would tuck itself into the gap. We co-existed
thus, for days, and eviction never crossed
my mind. The morning after a weekend away,
I saw, in its place, a web vaster and more flaccid,
hosting a gray spider, many times the size
of my unobtrusive and likely digested friend.
Catching wind of me, the new squatter tried
to wedge itself in the corner by the back wall
away from the conspicuous web but its rear
rear abdomen and trailing legs stuck up, flailed
and wouldn’t fit. … ...continue reading
In the early 1990s on a frosty winter’s weekend, I attended an international school job fair at Queen’s University. I had only been teaching in Canada for a few years, but there had been a freeze on salary for teachers in the Province of Ontario. I had taken loans to return to university to complete my Honours Bachelor of English & Drama degree. Due to the pay freeze, I wondered how many years it would take me to pay off those loans, that seemed to hang over my head like the Sword of Damocles. I drove from London Ontario, where I was living and working, to Kingston, and the attractive Queen’s University campus. I was nervous and excited at one and the same time at the prospect of possibly being hired to teach at an international school.… ...continue reading
Rita reminded Irving of the female leads in the after-school movies he had watched fifteen years before at his babysitter’s house (Rebecca: she was on the high school track team, her mother owned a travel agency, and her father lived in Montana). However, unlike most of those characters, Rita showed no interest in remaking herself—Irving had the satisfied sense that she would not be exchanging her thick glasses for contacts, amplifying her straight, shoulder-length hair into unnatural heights, throwing out her jeans and T-shirts and replacing them with mini-skirts and an inconsistent array of jackets and halter-tops, not in any scenario he could predict, at any rate.
They met in their last semester at college, in a seminar class about autobiography. He was taking the class because it was the last English literature seminar that was available, and he needed one to fulfill his graduation requirements.… ...continue reading