Without Lifting A Finger

It'd been a semi-serious resolution for at least two years. I accomplished the climb yesterday morning. Especially on the way down, I had to talk to my knees.;) Occasionally I'd stop to shoot a bird (often quite the balancing act along the rugged trail). Perhaps the most cooperative model was a Bewick's Wren, which I saw on (and heard) on the return trip. Amazing little guy. I'll post his video separately. The only slight disappointment: the HOLLYWOOD sign (see last pic).;) *

 

Though "Paris and Lisbon" was an interruption (I read a bit here and there, but not significantly), the beginning was a slow crawl and a bit boring. I didn't start getting interested till the Hosea and Gomez motif came into view.;) * The cab when it came stopped at the turnoff and then backed and turned and came rocking and bumping down the rutted mud road and pulled up in the clearing. She got out on the far side and paid the driver and spoke briefly with him and the driver nodded and she stepped away. The driver put the cab in gear and put his arm across the seat and backed the cab and turned. He looked toward the river. Then he pulled away out to the road and went back toward town. He took her hand. Tenía miedo que no vendrías, he said. She didnt answer. She leaned against him. Her black hair falling about her shoulders. The smell of soap. The flesh and bone living under the cloth of her dress. Me amas? he said. Sí. Te amo.

A man was coming down the road driving a donkey piled high with firewood. In the distance the churchbells had begun. The man smiled at him a sly smile. As if they knew a secret between them, these two. Something of age and youth and their claims and the justice of those claims. And of the claims upon them. The world past, the world to come. Their common transiencies. Above all a knowing deep in the bone that beauty and loss are one.

Three new poems are up at Off Course Issue #103 (12/2025): "Drink Deep," "Dylan Whiskey Bar," and "Without Leaving the Farm." Thank you, Ricardo and Isabel Nirenberg. Off Course #103

She looked away from him off into the hollow sky and men down at a black ridge and then down farther into what appeared to be two green swelling lakes. She didn’t realize he had taken her glasses but this landscape could not seem exceptional to her for she seldom paid any close attention to her surroundings. “You got to say it,” he repeated. “You got to say you love me.” She was always careful how she committed herself. “In a sense,” she began, “if you use the word loosely, you might say that. But it’s not a word I use. I don’t have illusions. I’m one of those people who see through to nothing.”