Sunrise in Phoenix
It was less traveled
The family of George V of Hanover is sitting for a portrait, holding frozen poses, hoping that Mr. Giere will capture them warmly so that a way for unification with Britain can be influenced. George is now forced to look to his right, hiding his dead eye, focusing on a ceiling water stain, pretending to care about his oldest daughter which he doesn't for she was the first of three female disappointments and he holds it against her. His wife tries her best to gaze at George with admiration, but that is a false expression which she mostly carries off because her true loves, her baby girls, are on her lap and shoulder, wondering why their father is so distant and not understanding why he keeps looking up at God.
The sticky little muffin
We aspire to greatness
Internet bill
The Salvation Army man outside the grocery store rings his tin bell to Dean Martin imploring the clouds to open with a torrent of white. He hovers near his red money pot, guarding it, guilting us to toss in lonely quarters whether or not we believe Jesus was someone's son. When we pass without giving he stares us down with brimstone. We drop our eyes to avoid the shame, make internal excuses about already giving even though we haven't. And won't.
The hand is often wrapped around my spine
The small rural town in northern New Hampshire sits quiet, waiting, church steeple pointing toward heaven, cutting through the slanted snow, sitting center of county farms, welcoming visitors to the Blue Cloud restaurant but wanting them to leave after a spell, seeing Ned and JD at the post office and collaring Reverend Thompson in the square to discuss the holiday pageant, going to bed thinking of the cake not ordered from Brown's Bakery, waking to the best coffee ever made and a world of white.
The sandworms are absent
The dogs sometime sleep together when it's cold, leaving empty the cushion closest to the glass door, icy there, lonely, separate. Together, they huddle for collective warmth, or to face off to see if the original squatter will give up his post. Perhaps it's fondness that brings them together, dog love, if dogs can love, pleasure in company, life companions. What does it say about the one second to the bed?
From above
Thinking about Isis
The person sitting next to me is doodling. Small little flowers. Each with five petals and a small circle in the middle. They are begging for color. Yellow. Or a shade of bright pink. The flowers--are they daisies?--are asking to be freed from the page, to grow wild, fall to the floor and replace the carpet with hundreds of petals. They long to push toward the horizon and relieve the lack of concentration, the boredom that comes from meetings like these. Where can I find such flora, life that consumes the observer and settles things?
Sinterklass in the Netherlands
The Russian winter white dwarf hamster is unaware he's going nowhere. He climbs aboard the wheel, leans into it, excited about travel and surprise, new vistas, exotic foods. He's hoping for a shapely mate at the other end of the endless moving sidewalk, a nice smelling female amenable to snuggling and more. This makes him run faster, hope in the distance, love waiting, tiny claws digging in. But he is disappointed. Again. The new realm is strikingly parallel to the old one. And the one before that. Furniture is arranged similar. The same food is served, water spigot, too. The big hand looks nearly identical. Is this how the world is ordered? Modular, structured, equivalent? He retreats to the new nest, same as the old nest, to consider things and plan tomorrow's journey, running farther to find a place he's sure is out there.
My father is always glad to hear from me. He lives in a shrinking world and drives a car that only knows five places to go. He mostly stays within his own walls and the accumulation of years, preparing, waiting, eying the bottle of caramel colored liquor a dozen times a day. I call from airports, making his day, answering the same questions, offering continuity, knowing that one day the news won't be good and that, like all living things, his voice will grow slower, tired, Memphis drawl more pronounced until, as his twilight takes greater hold, we have another innocuous conversation for me to return to again and again..jpg)
Philip Roth retires