These familiar landscapes Worked and reworked in my mind These many years. So familiar That the truth of them has long since disappeared Melting gently into the way it was Fading into their own order. I was young once, I know My life populated by faces and voices Who did not then and still…
All posts by drice
FOR GARY
“One day standing on a river with my fly rod I’ll have the courage to admit my life to myself” Jim Harrison A long last swig of thermos coffee, some extra tippet Just in case. We step away from gravel roads And all the grating calls of civilization Into the waiting stream. Still and clear…
Reading
As far back as I can recall, I have been a reader. By the time I was in the second grade, I was addicted to comic books of every sort. Stacks of them slumped in the corners of my small room. By the fourth grade, Bluto, Uncle Scrooge, Huey, Dewey and Louie made way…
“The buzz-saw snarled and rattled in the yard…”
I sit in my garden reading, writing, the afternoon punctuated by the sound of a neighbor blowing leaves off his lawn. From the other direction I can hear a chainsaw in its spasmodic ripping and I wonder which neighborhood tree is being trimmed or taken down. Many of us move to a place like…
Dave Suspended
We rummaged through our closet, trying to find those pictures of Dave. They were taken before our reach into the digital world, when we stuck things in albums, not folders. We remembered the walk, the climb, the rope swing. We remembered his kind interest in us, that he stopped his life because we were on…
Bars
I grew up a son among daughters; one older sister, two younger. Within the world of our family, the inclusive world that we shared with cousins and aunts and uncles and relatives of indefinite connection, there were other circles of existence that were equally exclusive. The adult world beyond the borders and just out of…
Alleys
Neighborhoods no longer have alleys. I am not sure when this practice stopped, but when I was growing up on the west side of LA, alleys seemed to be the norm. Of course they were handy, acting as sort of a service bay for homes, sporting trashcans, garages, and boats, but they also offered…
‘55
“In the sun that is young once only Time let me play and be Golden in the mercy of his means” D. Thomas The year was 1955, Ike was finishing his first term and LA was a world waiting to be explored. On a Saturday morning, once we were up and fed, my…
Wood
I had a cord of wood delivered last week: nice aged oak, cleanly split and stacked. It pleases me to see it all the side of my driveway. There was a time when a cord of wood would have been a great luxury. The house that we purchased when we first came to the valley…
1/4 Tank
My friend, Dave, once asked me, “If you had ¼ tank of gas left in your car, and that was all the gas that you could get, would you not be very careful as to how you use that gas?” Well, he continued to express that we have, at best, a ¼ tank left and…