The Yellow Tree

SOMETHING to REMEMBER the FOREST BY

The dog and I had come to the end of the wooded trail, just before the parking lot started, and that’s where someone had set up a souvenir shop. It wasn’t much more than a bus stop. A table was piled with autumn leaves, branches, pine cones, stones from the creek. I picked up a soft owl feather and set it down. I listened to the field recording of wind in the trees.

Places to Hide

Another new one, from book in progress:



PLACES to HIDE

They released two tigers down at the end of 32^nd Street, where all the new apartments are. It wasn’t hard for the tigers to adapt. There was plenty to eat. Places to hide. In a year there were six more of them.

Washed Ashore

WASHED ASHORE


It really got raining hard about 30 miles from home. The traffic on the highway slowed to 45, the road was slick and every car threw a spray in their wake. When we got home, the driveway was a shallow river. The gutters overflowed and all that water splashed as we hurried through the downpour into the house. We turned the lights on, got the heat going, and when I looked past the window curtain, I saw the submarine in our front yard. All the bolts and plates shined with the light from our house. Its propeller spun like a flower trying to get it back to the sea.

The Last Telegram

This is from a book on the Good Deed Rain assembly line:


The LAST TELEGRAM
You paid by the word so you made a few simple sentences look like a poem. It would be sent over the wire and someone far away would hear a knock on their door. A uniformed messenger would deliver the telegram. It didn’t seem so miraculous then, those everyday messages shared the air with the passenger pigeons.

1970s Children's book

I finally starting writing my 1970s
children's novel! I'm 5 pages in so far
but I can tell it's going to be quite
a wonder. I've been taking notes on
this for a few years now and I'm so
glad to be able to get to it at last.
Maybe I'll share some of the writing
soon, stay tuned.

1946 double feature

Saw two great movies from 1946,
Deadline at Dawn and Nobody
Lives Forever. All those little details
are so great, like the telescope view
of the moon for a dime and the rowboat
under the pier, the little shops and cafes
at night.