I have never smoked. I despise smoky rooms and avoid public entryways with strewn cigarette butts and exhaled vapors from the mouths and noses of strangers. Still, a faint magnetic pull urges me to fill my own bronchial tubes deeply of tobacco smoke, hold the crest of it like a surfer’s wave until it rolls, dragon-like, out. The faint wafting of a cigarette on a breeze can set off this hankering, most likely linked to my childhood when cigarette packages were just beginning to post warnings.
Both my parents smoked in the house, and the car as we traveled. I hated it as an older teen. It embarrassed me. They were not cool smokers. Mom did not hold her cigarette elegantly with delicate, manicured fingers like the magazine adds.…
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One tree trunk paused our walk:
corkscrew-twisty,
as if a tornado had taken and spun it.
“Yes,” the dendrologist explained:
“more flexible, this tree, better survivor
than its neighbors—for instance
that one on the ground—to gale forces.
“Some of the storms we’ve had may even
have whirled it from the top—
like a top, you know. Over decades.”
With a finger I traced a spiral up its bark,
all the way back to boyhood.
“Son, you must redeem my insecurities.”
“Dear, you’ll despise the people I despise.”
Our group left that tree, found others. I
swung into the walk, feeling lithe—
by turning, turning, I came round right.
– Russell Rowland…
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Grief is sneaky. Like the most stubborn of weeds, it finds its way through every crack. Sometimes I’d be working on my computer and hear my phone ping or the sound of a car turning onto our road, and I’d nod to myself and think that must be Luke, and it would take a moment before the penny dropped. Something in me refused to believe he wasn’t somewhere close by. After all, he couldn’t possibly have gone far. At any second I expected him to come strolling nonchalantly into the kitchen and order whoever is in there to make him some food.
I mean, this was a guy who’d lived his whole life within half an hour’s drive of home. In the last decade, he’d left West Sussex only a handful of times.…
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People no longer smell sulfur when they see me. A papaya vendor at Hangman’s Market takes a sudden interest in the depths of a coin purse. A bank clerk’s posture stiffens with dignity and fear. A young man seizes me up and dismisses me as a possible competitor for any female he would seek to bed.
As a result, in my dotage, I’ve permitted myself to become a man of habit. Hangman’s Market each weekday at 11, where I load my string bag like all the market-goers–papaya, yams, some dried sausage. A daily glass of tafia before lunch at Don Pedro’s by the sea. A crossword puzzle I make no real effort to complete. The siesta afterward, while my housekeeper cooks my evening meal without supervision, since she’s the only person who can be trusted, and even then, I make her taste dinner first.…
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Steeped sage massing at the bottom of a cup
Moves as seaweed moves in the brothy sea
My child’s tears as salty as the sea
Deprived of the comfort I withhold
Her comfort dried up like a potsherd
Unearthed from beneath red desert sands
The sand empty-handed but for heat
Burning as this mug burns in my hands
I hold a mug that promises remedy
Passed down to me by ancient mothers
Sometimes a mother must dry up quickly
However bitterly she cries for milk
I swallow and it’s bitter on my tongue
Steeped sage massing at the bottom of a cup
– Christine Pennylegion…
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I’m not a youngster anymore. Our family doctor says I need to exercise more, to lower my blood sugar and to lower my weight. So I walk. A lot. I walk the treadmill at the gym every other day. Four times a week, I head up the road to the Echelon Mall to do my five miles there. Yes, I’ve become a mall walker – I never thought I would.
The first Sunday this March was windy and cold. I grabbed my favorite jacket, a well-worn, tan hoodie I’ve kept at least ten years longer than I should. It’s unraveling around the pockets and cuffs. I donned it, went outside to my truck, and drove to the mall.
Back in the late 1970s and the 1980s, the Echelon Mall was a showplace.…
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The trees with branches thick and coarse, barely move when children swing from them.
Those trees have strong, deep roots that won’t let a child fall.
Such trees have branches that can hold the weight of an argument over who did the dishes last.
Such trees can stand to have the very bark torn from their bodies over screams of ‘I hate you’ and ‘just leave me alone.’ Such trees know how to bounce back and start a fresh the next day.
Trees like that, solid and unmoving, can handle weather changes—cold stares and burning tension.
Trees with roots that cannot be ripped from the ground are able to handle the heat of a good old fiery career change.
But there are trees that haven’t grown to be so resilient.…
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