The Daughter Remembers I remember when you woke me, Mom, at 1 a.m., against all precedent, to watch the shimmering red-blue aurora borealis and the dark night and stillness. You wrapped me in a red-checked blanket and held me close, until I fell asleep against you, arms wrapped tight. I remember when you divided the…
The Nurse Remembers I remember the first meeting, as we signed her up…being in silence as I took her vitals and did the paperwork. Her cancer was so large when we found it, you could see it in her breast. We talked about her pain. I remember when she first was wheeled in to the…
I REMEMBER The Woman Remembers I remember, as a child, longing for summer and sunshine during the coldest months of the year. I sometimes doubted that winter would ever end. I remember the heat of the sun. My skin blistered. I remember kissing Don in the back seat, and our guilty touches. I remember the…
Hiding in cramped attics or soured hay, behind a secret wall, under a bed or up a tree, caused them often to pray. A thin soup, a crust of bread, an ear of corn to chew, where came the next meal, they seldom knew. Drained of hope by pain and sorrow, their next stop caused…
Sullied water and moldy bread, a wormy apple or bright berries, it was on these they fed. Night two or was it more? Gators snapping as carefully they stepped in mud and gore. Sounds of tiger growls rent the air, when the tree snake reached down to dust Clara’s curly hair. Dawn found them on…
Arletta Dawdy came up to Lake County from Santa Rosa to hear me read for the Land Trust event, and felt inspired when she heard “Triptych: Jeweled Bones.” When she went home, she sat down before bed and dashed off the story of Clara’s Air. “I had almost nothing to do with what came about…
Mother shooed us into the cellar. I turned my pockets inside out and showed her my discoveries. While we waited for the storm to pass, my mother told us stories: saints’ bones preserved in crypts of faraway cathedrals; healers who told the future by throwing bones as if they were dice; and air-raid cellars in…
I fingered the treasures in my pocket as I strolled to the tree that hovered over the creek. It had no soil under it. Roots dangled through the air, then plunged straight and deep into rushing water. Fish swam between roots. With soil between roots the tree had sheltered a rabbit burrow, not swimming fish….
This flash fiction of 3 parts, or panels, was originally published in The Portland Review. I’m posting it on Riehlife in three parts. “Triptych: Jeweled Bones” links to an on-going theme of how the land nurtures us as writers and creative people. Arletta Dawdy found inspiration in this piece and I’ll be posting her story-poem…
Today I’m part of an invited poetry reading for the Land Trust in Lake County up here in Northern California. We’ll read at Rodman Slough. One of the poems I’ll read will be one of my favorites, and one I consider to be my father’s most powerful. Here are my father’s comments on his poem–It…