“I’m leaving for the day,” Robert shouted into the depths
of the big hollowed out tree.
Robert and his
wife were doing very well for themselves. These were hard times for squirrels.
Some squirrels were sharing a tree with two to three other families. But not
Robert and Vanessa. No, it was just the two of them in a big redwood near a
large park. That’s right; they were doing so well; they were living park side.
“Don’t
forget to pick up an extra acorn! Donny and Faye are coming for dinner!”
Vanessa shouted back at her husband. So, with that, Robert was off to work.
Vanessa’s heart always sank a little after she heard her husband scurry down the large redwood. She no longer had a job, and their babies were full grown and long gone.…
Even if we wake before dawn, we nevertheless inhabit the dark, still feel that need to light only a sole lamp, aware of how much we’re yet in that other world of sleep which is meant to make this one right. Those who have been up all night have more to say than we who recently rolled the stone from the mouth of our bed, but many share rooms with faces of childhood friends smiling in fields behind new houses, breaking through for those last minutes before the rays of yesterday are replaced by photons from this newest return, in the moments before darkness ceases to be the vacuum pulling us toward the heavens and just evaporates.
Someone You Love is Still Alive – Ephraim Scott Sommers
Even before I read the poems in Someone
You Love is Still Alive, I heard reports from shootings in schools and
malls, in nightclubs and the bases of armed forces. I remembered hearing
stories from survivors of natural disasters in reports on radio and television.
I remembered how buildings like the Twin Towers in New York City fell. I
remembered the death of Prince. I remembered the crumbling of the Roman
Catholic Church under the sexual abuse claims against priests and bishops. I
remembered the death of my dad, the death of my first marriage, the death of a
dream that would never be. They were just too painful to remember. I am not sure
how to make sense of these events whose presence has become a fixture in my
memory.…
Soft piano music plays from the parlor as Dahlia hovers in the foyer. Her pink lace jacket is distinctly out of style. Her auburn hair is not ineptly styled, but Poppy is eyeing the white streaks with an affected air.
“They’re all in the
parlor,” Poppy says. “The other ladies are already having their biscoff. It’s
fat free,” she adds.
Dahlia’s shoulders
curl forward over her unshapely form. “That sounds wonderful,” she says, eyes
darting.
Poppy exchanges a
look with Daisy, who is idling by the door the parlor, holding a bottle of red
wine in one hand and a bottle opener in the other. “You can open it,” she says.
Dahlia passes Daisy without looking her in the eye.
‘The Virgin of Prince Street: Expeditions into Devotion’ By Sonja Livingston
If you think a woman’s quest to find a statue from the church of her childhood wouldn’t be that engaging a mystery, you’d be wrong. In The Virgin of Prince Street: Expeditions into Devotion, Sonja Livingston refuses simple devotion as a motive and keeps digging for the source of religious impulse. As she considers her motive for pursuing an old sanctuary statue, she asks great questions: “Why does the faith of our upbringing leave such a deep imprint?” “How does one wooden virgin’s smile capture a girl’s imagination so completely that, decades later, she will spend months tracking it down?” And, perhaps most importantly, “When else did we bow to something larger than ourselves?”…
