The distillation of all the different bits of paper, photos and odd items that had been so important to a life, dwindle down to an afternoon punctuated with questions, memories, tears, laughter and cardboard boxes. Collections from a lifetime are shuffled from box to box, from life to life along[…]
Next to me on the train the lady with her Bible was studiously reading the Word. Working to unlock the wisdom from some 3000 years ago, she plunged from the Bible schoolbook back to the Scripture checking and rechecking the references to peoples and places long ago gone. Faith is[…]
Across the distance I am reaching out to you. With every means, I am calling you. As if directly from my mind to yours I could speak. As if through the granite mountains and the city’s noise you could hear. How often have you listened? Have I ever touched you?[…]
The river running wild leaps its banks, bursting its borders like a wayward child. Escaping, ravaging the roots and soils of fertile fields, it defies the invisible lines of counties, states, and nations, and even the confines of gravity’s unrelenting grip, spouting suddenly skyward then slamming down in the fierce[…]
by James P. Gallagher © 1996 Painting by Fred Danziger The mis-shapened waning moon creeps above the stark marbled names rinsed colorless under the metamorphosizing clouds as the shadows slip and slither around and over each stone. They are not alone. Passing through the graveyard are not only shadows but[…]
In a museum the other day I saw an orrery from the time of Jefferson and Franklin. It was very wrong. Those tiny orbs arching out from the sun’s center were not only disproportionate to each others relative size but they were not even close to the correct order of[…]
The wind is in conspiracy with the new leaves. Only yesterday these were budless, bony statues motionless, framing my window box. Now a dancing pointillism mesmerizes me. The light fluctuates in proportion to the clouds. On the trunk a small woodpecker puffs its downy belly against the scaly bark. Among[…]
In youth there is urgency, in the blood, pounding in your temples, when desire is only inches and an instant away. It’s like falling. You can no longer catch yourself. You can’t even look back, the inevitable screaming up at you, the consequences racing down behind. After youth, when urgency[…]
I put out my arm, give him a steady handhold as we descend the icy stairs. His left foot descends one step then his right foot descends one step. I wait for each to alight. I am still thinking of how very thin he was within my hug. “The pace[…]
The shrouded woodland seems invaded by the seeping mist leaving not even an acre within my gaze. Closely packed at attention each tree in the barren stand stares down to the fallen which lie parallel, each to each, submerged beneath the caustic fog, half awash in flares of the retreating[…]