The Veteran April, then March. The year moves backward. So go the clocks. It had been early evening. Now tocsins sound for lunch. “The maid was in the garden,” three little girls intone, “hanging out the clothes. Along came a blackbird.” Its wings flap like a portent, though nothing dire as Poe’s raven. Nevermore, that […]
Tag Archives: Richard Baldasty
Richard Baldasty
No Idea You have come to comfort me, I know, while I am beset by Bedouins and their camels in the driveway. Kind of you; all the more because you don’t believe me—no one else sees them and I, old man, am considered fanciful in my distress. Perhaps so: life at length plays fast with […]
Bowl by Richard Baldasty
At the front door, three monks. At the back window, four more. They have come to help us pray, help us fall to our knees, bow our heads, get it all out—what we really have on our minds. But we tell them we’re not like that, not big strugglers or puzzlers. We let each day […]
Buzz by Richard Baldasty
Bees come from Hampstead, from Medina, from Milan and Singapore. From everywhere and more. It’s bee time, bees en masse buzzing like celebrities at Cannes. Sound means vibration, vibration equals quiver. Quiver turns quake. Bridges bounce. Streets split open. Buildings are falling down. People stand outside their vanished houses. Some in fancy dress, many naked. […]
Heart-stopping by Richard Baldasty
The nomads departed, quietly as nomads often do, not saying goodbye, leaving us willow baskets they’d filled, some with stones the color of noon, some with stones the color of twilight, and some with the song that rises from fathoms deep of perfect darkness. We packed their gifts away. Put them in the room for […]