“Although the fig tree shall not blossom,
neither shall fruit be in the vines;
the labor of the olive shall fail,
and the fields shall yield no meat;
the flock shall be cut off from the fold,
and there shall be no herd in the stalls.”
Do you hear me? Do you understand? There will be bad times, brother.
In my eighty-one years, you better believe I’ve had them.
Three years ago I lost Nita.
We’re supposed to get wiser as we get older, and I guess I have.
Even so, loss is hard and lonely.
Here’s what I know.
Listen, now.
“Yet I will rejoice in the Lord, I will joy in the God of my salvation.
The Lord God is my strength and he will make my feet like hinds’ feet,
and he will make me walk upon mine high places.”
I didn’t always know that.
When you’re young, you think the fig will always bloom.
You think there will always be fruit on the tree and cattle in the stalls.
Now don’t be thick-headed. You know what I mean. Even if you’re young, you know what I’m saying.
But this isn’t my story. It’s Trevor’s.
Trevor for sure didn’t know.
To this day, I don’t know if he’s taken hold of the truth.
It’s not profitable for a man to express his faith in these days, and when you’re young like Trevor, you’re not inclined to go against everything the world says is right.
One has to be tried, tested, and hardened by fire.
That boy.
He’s a remarkable boy.
— Maxfield Martin
copyright 2016, joseph e bird, from the novel A Prayer for Rain
i’m a kid
riding my bike
near my house
and another kid
rides up and says
Hi.
I’m Chuck.
so many years ago.
i’m a teenager
riding in that
unbelievable green
GTO convertible
with Chuck driving
his father’s car
singing old Black Water.
so many years ago.
i’m in college
rooming with Chuck
and he’s up all night
recording music
on his reel-to-reel
driving me crazy
because he’s Chuck.
so many years ago.
i’m at Fat Daddy’s
Chuck is the DJ
and everyone
is dancing
and all the girls
want to dance
with Chuck.
so many years ago.
i’m standing
in the church
getting married
and Chuck is standing
with the others
and all the girls
smile at Chuck.
so many years ago.
so many years ago.
so many years ago.
i have moved
and live near the
very place on
the same street
that i rode my bike
and met Chuck.
so many years ago.
i am older
as is he
and we haven’t talked
in decades
and time
and distance
separated friends
so many years ago.
and then i hear
that Chuck
was in an accident
and his pain is great
and his recovery long
and it hurts
because he was my friend
so many years ago.
i am here
he is there
i’ll send him a note
i’ll say a prayer
and hope he will
dance again
as he did
so many years ago.
i write words
that seem shallow
and inadequate
to try to capture
the spirit that
he shared
with me
so many years ago.
so many years ago.
copyright 2018, joseph e bird
from January 21, 2017
Last night was one of those nights. Fell awake around 3:00, finally decided to quit fighting it around 3:30. I made a cup of tea and sat down in front of the computer. My imaginary friend, Heather, has been stuck in a waffle house for a few days now. I’m sure she wishes I’d get her out of there.
So at 3:30, I was going to make something happen.
But.
4:00, and she was still there. I had managed to go back and tweak a few things, made a couple of sentences better. But I was still blocked.
Maybe this is the end. Maybe Heather never gets out of the waffle house. Maybe nobody cares what happens to her.
I’m 10,000 words in. Not that much, really, in word count. I’ve abandoned novels at 40,000 words. Except that I’ve taken my time with these words, tried to write them better as I go. So it would be disheartening to pull the plug.
There’s a mother and a kid – a screaming kid – in the waffle house, too. At first, the mother was sitting with her back to Heather. I rearranged the furniture. Now they’re sitting beside Heather, facing each other, so that when Heather hears the kid scream and turns to look, she makes eye contact with the mother. It was an uncomfortable moment.
And then. And then. And then.
At 5:00, Heather was still in the waffle house. But things had changed dramatically. I was unstuck. I went to bed. I still couldn’t sleep, but it was a more restful insomnia.
Lesson 1: Maybe insomnia has a reason.
Lesson 2: Sometimes you just need to rearrange the furniture.
Lesson 3: Sometimes being uncomfortable is good.
Heather Roth has little to look forward to.
The alien overlords have enslaved Earth’s population. Her two sons are working for the cyborg underground and her brother is the head of the Benevolent Alien Reconciliation Federation (BARF), which seeks to create a more peaceful world through mind control. On top of all of this, Heather has a really nasty cold that just won’t go away.
And then she learns that her father is being paroled from the penal colony on Jupiter’s moon, Europa. Which, as it turns out, is really not a big deal because he’s being assigned to work as a cook on the aircraft carrier Nimitz, which has been repurposed as a floating sheep farm.
Then Heather finds an old guitar, learns three chords and leads a musical revolution based on Nickleback songs. The aliens leave.
A story of mathematics and free verse, Heather Girl takes the reader on the ultimate emotional journey, culminating in a long nap.
How much can one woman take?
Heather Roth has little to look forward to. Her two sons, who have occupied most of her adult life, have grown and left her alone in the house in which she grew up. Her ex-husband, for whom she still has feelings despite his abusive nature, lives hundreds of miles away. And she’s being treated for Huntington’s, a disease that ravaged her mother, and for which she knows there is no cure.
Then the news she wasn’t expecting. Her father is being paroled from prison in Texas where he has been serving a sentence for the murder of his wife, Heather’s mother.
She’ll do anything to keep him out of her life, but when she is forced to take him into her home, she learns that the lives of her family weren’t what they seemed to be. A story of heartbreak and hope, Heather Girl, delivers compassion and love, even in the darkest hours.
“I shouldn’t have come here. I’m sorry.”
He reached across the table and put his hand on hers. She pulled away.
“I need to go.”
“Can’t you stay a little longer?”
There was no guile in his expression. His eyes had turned soft and pleading, his smile gentle and nervous. He was seventeen again, unsure of himself, captivated by the girl with the flaming red hair who could persuade him to do her bidding with her own teasing, alluring smile. He looked at her, a strand of his brown hair in front of his eyes, enticing her to brush it away, to touch his face, to feel his shoulders through his white t-shirt, tempting her to stay, to finish dinner, to find the bottle he had hidden behind the cereal in the cabinet above the refrigerator, to sip and smell the sweet liquor on his breath, and let the evening take them back in time to their wonderful and terrible lives of so many years ago, that would delight the flesh, break the heart, and leave them in ruin.
“I have to go.”
He stayed at the table as she got up and walked out. As she opened the front door, she heard him from the kitchen.
“Heather.”
She closed the door behind her.
Copyright 2018, joseph e bird, from the novel Heather Girl.
do you remember
the smell of spring
and the freshly cut grass
when it’s ok
to sit in the sun
for a few minutes
without guilt?
do you remember
driving with
the windows down
and walking without
a jacket
for a few days
without worry?
do you remember
the daffodils
and the beans
and the tomatoes
growing so freely
for a few weeks
without tending?
do you remember
the windows open
and the breezes flowing
and the skies so clear
in the night and the day
for a few months
without winter?
do you remember
to everything
there is a season
and a time
to every purpose
under the heaven
without apprehension?
tomorrow will come
soon enough
so find peace
in the rest
and gain strength
for the labor
that is tomorrow.
copyright 2018, joseph e bird
When the last lingering light of day had finally disappeared, she waited another twenty minutes. Then she walked through the automatic doors of the ER, completely unnoticed, into the night.
She headed east, toward the homeless shelters. She had driven through that neighborhood many times during the day, where ragged men with shopping carts gather under the interstate bridge, where young kids, barely in their teens, mingle with older addicts on the steps of the treatment center, where the women who would later stroll the streets sat on the curb smoking cigarettes outside their run-down apartment buildings. In the light of day, they were there, but the street belonged to those whose lives were comfortably insulated from the stench of unwashed clothes and grimy hands with broken fingernails and shattered liquor bottles and needles in the gutter and the ever-present hint of mind-altering chemicals breezing through the air. It belonged to those who shopped at the open-air market and dined at the sidewalk cafes and visited the plush offices of medical specialists that appeared like satellites around the hospital, not far from the free clinic or the street doctors who offered their own cures for those who had no other choice. In the daytime, they were all there together, some living, others waiting.
She walked the first block away from the hospital as she always walked, quickly and with purpose. She crossed the street and onto the sidewalk that fronted a medical office building. She began to slow, not completely sure of her destination. At the other end of the block, behind the office building, the parking lot was almost completely vacant. In the next block, where houses once stood, was another parking lot, this one unpaved and ungated, sometimes attended by a man in small hut, but now the hut was empty. Across the way near the opposite corner two men stood smoking cigarettes.
She kept walking, her hands stuffed in her jacket pockets.
Another block.
A man pulling a hand cart, slight of build with long, stringy hair passed by her without even looking up.
In the next block, a woman stood near the corner, another in the middle of the block on the other side of the street. Heather crossed the street at the corner, avoiding the first woman. The second woman at the middle of the block stepped back, giving her room to pass. They made brief eye contact, each sizing the other up. After she had passed, Heather slowed and finally stopped. She turned back to the woman. She stared back at Heather.
“Yeah?”
Heather took a step toward her. The woman didn’t move. Heather took another step and saw that the woman was too young to be on the street. A runaway, no doubt. She looked like she hadn’t eaten in a week. Her eyes were wide, accentuated with heavy eyeliner and too much blue eye shadow. She shifted from one foot to another and kept her arms crossed, a habit Heather surmised was developed to hide the needle tracks.
“What do you want?”
“I’m…uh…looking…”
“Get it out lady. What are you looking for?”
“Hydrocodone.”
“You a cop?”
“No. I’ve got a serious health condition. It affects my nerves. I’m just looking for some relief.”
“Right. Can’t help you lady.”
Heather could see that she didn’t trust her. Not that getting busted by an undercover cop would ruin her life. More like an inconvenience.
Heather glanced around and then pulled a bill from her jacket pocket. She made sure the woman saw that it was a hundred, then folded it and tucked into the woman’s hand which was still gripping her arm. The woman didn’t hesitate. She took the bill and stuck it in the back pocket of her jeans.
“You too stupid to be a cop. Hang on.”
She pulled a phone from her front pocket and made a call.
“Hey, Bobcat. I got a woman here looking for tabs. Can you set her up? She’s legit. She’s too scared to be a cop.”
She turned to Heather.
“How much you need?”
That’s something Heather hadn’t considered. She had no idea.
“Twenty?”
The woman spoke to Bobcat, then back to Heather.
“Two hundred bills. You got that?”
Heather nodded.
The woman stuck the phone back in her pocket.
“Two blocks down, take a right. Bobcat’ll be on the front porch.”
“Thanks.”
“Don’t thank me. Curse me.”
copyright 2018, joseph e bird
from the novel, Heather Girl
Joseph E Bird 