Directions
I'm starting to get
uncomfortable with the idea
of details. My eyes have
grown accustomed
to just scanning the
news. I become impatient
with the loose words of
novels. Explanations of anything
make me cringe. I'm
beginning to prefer
white walls, sleek
furniture. The article I just read
about typefaces and
fonts set my blood
boiling. Who cares about
their slightly splayed legs,
the contrast
of high strokes, their teardrop terminals?
Don't people have
anything better to do?
I've been a nit-picky
proof reader myself
but wouldn't it be
better to just let people
express themselves, get
rid of spelling
and grammar? Throw all
recipes
into the trash bin of
intestines?
Decimate all
evaluations? Let the check book
go in and out of balance, like a bow-legged stork?
Unravelling
Years later we learn of three more couples
who are coming undone, their good looks and charm
growing wrinkly and predictable
like weeds folding into themselves
under winter's weight. Then my son's ex,
who broke his heart, resurfaces
with an incurable disease. My daughter, in turn,
finds herself lost in a distant paradise
where everything goes her way but that nagging suspicion
that she has not quite grown up. My mother lies
in a waterlogged grave, the only one
marring a sea of perfect, land-locked stones.
Twenty years into this new century
and it strikes me now that I will never be able
to return to the last. Imagination
reaches only forward, a painted bunting
sitting on a bare northern branch
having lost its way from the sultry south
as it ponders its next flight.
Stuck in the
Middle
Somewhere
between yoctometers and yottameters
the infinitesimal and
the end of time
where gigaparsecs parse
out
unimaginable distances
we are stuck, akin to FM radio wavelengths,
elephants, and
hummingbirds.
This universe spins
circles around, inside,
and beyond us, as we
keep discovering
the ever greater and
lesser, trying
to place ourselves in
obvious insanity.
Only when a parent loses
a child
do we get a firmer grasp
of where we are,
everything at once
abundantly clear, the
weight of it
pulling us back to a
knowledge
of only us—fierce keys
to blind regeneration,
no matter how often
it happens to fail.
When Wind Meets Water
When wind meets water
it sculpts sunlight
a harvest of midday
and morning, evening
lain deep
in dark furrows, a
prisoner
of air. Just below the
surface
light lies locked in
waning
currents of night,
steadfast
in atmosphere's absence,
the place weather never
reaches
and nothing is carried
by the wind.
The reach of sunlight
stays locked
above the water, the
change of seasons
welcomed there, the
breath of time
rippling, blinding, then gone.
Days of Nothing
Days of nothing but the
bottleneck of sounds
coming from the other
side of the window
the constant chatter of
construction
and lawn mower, the
birds
that never came to our
feeder.
Days of outside in and
inside out
of my dog breaking the
stillness
long enough to give me
pause.
These rooms the same,
one after
the other, each
co-constructed in their abolition
of freedom. Footholds
become ceilings
to those living below,
walls transparent
to memory. It's the
silence though
that holds me aloft,
keeps me treading
invisible waters of
inclination.
So many days of
something keep
pulling me back to
uncertain times—
even those less certain
than these.
Mark Saba has been writing fiction, poetry, and creative nonfiction for 40 years. His book publications include, most recently, Two Novellas: A Luke of All Ages / Fire and Ice, Calling the Names (poetry), and Ghost Tracks: Stories of Pittsburgh Past. His book of creative nonfiction, Forking Paths, will be published in the spring of 2022. His work has appeared widely in literary magazines around the U.S. and abroad. Also a painter, Mark recently retired as a medical illustrator at Yale University. He lives in Old Greenwich, CT (USA). Please see marksabawriter.com.
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