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Joseph E Bird

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Writing

She walks.

snowy neighborhood for web

It was another snowy night.

Larry Ellis lives in the same neighborhood I do. The scene last night was much like the photo above.  In the middle of the snow storm, he looked out his window and saw a young woman walking down the street, all alone in her world of white.  He wrote this:

She walks through the snow as if walking through time
The storm had covered all, erasing the present
Yesterday’s litter, this year’s rust, the cracks in the pavement
All gone under white
The streetlights, the porchlights, the moonlight and starlight
All combine tonight
Every line is straight and even, every wall upright
.
And she comes walking through as if from the past
As if from another world: maybe this perfect, soundless world
She walks alone and seems unworried
Unaffected by this that has kept every car in its garage
And has closed the schools and churches
.
Is her coat, so perfectly fitting
From another day?
Does she walk to some grand house
Now long vanished
That has reappeared in the throes of this storm?
That house where yellow light from tall windows
Makes bright rectangles on the snow in the lawn?
Will there be someone at that door to meet her
Someone to take her coat?
Candles and wine on the table
And a fire in the hearth?

Copyright 2016, Larry Ellis

1

The Casimir Effect

The story of Trevor and Sheu-lo had started with a conversation about apples. There had been no flash of physical magnetism, no sparks flew, no glint in the eye, no wry smile, no hint of seduction whatsoever. None of the elements that had made his encounters with Dani so gut-wrenchingly wonderful. Yet as their conversation had moved from Fuji apples to Bob Dylan and Eminem, something happened.

“It’s the Casimir effect,” Sheu-lo had said weeks later after they had finally abandoned the pretense that they were colleagues, nothing more. She had made the comment over dinner in a dimly lit restaurant, where music never played, an irony that Trevor found appealing.

“It’s a scientific principle. Casimir was a physicist who experimented with electromagnetic fields. Everyone knows about positive and negative fields.”

“Opposites attract,” Trevor said.

“Right. But Casimir discovered that there is a small attractive force that acts between two uncharged plates.”

“Not opposites?”

“Just two plain, metal plates.”

At first they had maintained their worlds separately, but they soon overlapped. And though they were spending many evenings together at Trevor’s insistence, they had limited their physical involvement. There were lapses in discipline which played on Trevor’s guilt on different levels. The feelings that he had for Sheu-lo were built on a foundation of respect.

There was no dramatic proposal, no elaborate ceremony.

They were married in Max’s church, attended by their families.

3

Blue

smoke-stack-cropped-for-web

That morning, I drove in the bright sunlight on ribbons of pavement that lay gently on the snow-covered hills against the deep blue sky.

Ray Lamontagne sang about trouble.

I sipped good, strong, black coffee.

I was by myself.

I like being with others, but I also like the times alone.

To sort it all out.

On the edge of Appalachia, the hills disappeared.

Across the Ohio River, the stacks pierced the sky and bellowed white cotton.

One hundred years from now, they won’t be there.

They weren’t there one hundred years ago.

That’s what those kinds of day will do for you.

 

 

 

 

3

Swinging.

When was the last time you did this?

On my way home this evening, I drove by one of those little roadside parks and saw this kid, a girl maybe 15 or 16, giving it all she had on a swing, oblivious to everything around her.  She was in her own world, and you could tell.

It made me want to go home and do the same.

There’s something about a swing.  You can take it nice and easy, like me in the video, or you can go scary high.  Either way, it just seems to make all the troubles of the day fade away.  Maybe it’s the weightless feeling you get at the apex.  Maybe it’s the centrifugal force that gives you a rush.  Maybe it’s just fun.

I’m an old dude, but I’m here to testifty that swinging is good for any body, any time, any age.

As Al Davis might have said, “Just swing, baby.”

 

 

3

My Back Pages

“but I was so much older then, 
I’m younger than that now.”

Bob Dylan, from My Back Pages

Larry Ellis just sent me this link earlier today.  See if you can name all the folk icons.  Cool stuff.

3

Words

 

I just found out how the story of Trevor Larson ends.

It took 91,000 words and 12 months.

Some of the things Trevor told me, though, are inconsistent.  I’ll have to talk to him more and sort those things out.

For now, it’s satisfying to close the loop.

4

A Prayer for Rain

He didn’t know her name.  They never exchanged words, though they sat side by side on a three-hour flight.  He would never see her again.

He saw her pain.  The source of her pain?  No, he didn’t know.  But he felt it in his own heart.

Trevor Larson wrote this for her.

Hear me, Lord.

Give me gentle rain.

Heal me, Lord.

Take away the pain.

Love me, Lord,

I just need a friend.

Hear me, Lord,

and be there till the end.

5

Home.

That feeling that draws you home.

Wherever home is.

This is what it is. Expressed by Sharon Lyn Stackpole.

Pass it on.

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