By Kathleen Haynie I drive by her turn-out, roll down the passenger car window to greet her with my best whinny. I can see her whinny ripple through the flesh of her sorrel and white soft muzzle. That muzzle will soon be buried in the red wheat bran she knows is coming. This time it is laced with bute to ease her pain from her sprained right knee. I hope the alfalfa sprinkles camouflage the taste of bute.* She is not too distracted with the hay and grain to lift each foot in turn so I can clean out the V ruts of each frog. After seventeen years, we know the drill. The curry comb pulls off twigs of the white winter coat on her back and haunches. Somehow the earth tells her body that it’s time to start letting go as the days grow longer. Yet the nights are…
Category: Sparks
Memorable writing that sparks imagination.
A Patch of Joy
By Christine Renaudin Slowly the idea grew from seemingly random pickings at the local thrift store a month or two ago, to design a painting along the seams of a small piece of patchwork discovered in the sewing notions section. Bold colors and markings drew me in, sharp contrasts, black acting as prevailing background: yellow on black, and vice versa, bright colors in between, the kind I have dreamed of playing with but never dared throwing first thing together on canvas. Circles and crosses, stars and stripes, straight and curvy, thin and think, flowers, abstracted and not, leaves, pink and red, bees and dragonflies, plain black on white: all patterns placed side by side in surprising, shockingly daring ways that made my mind bubble with joy, and my heart dance with the desire to play along. I bought the small rectangle of motley fabric and brought it home, where it sat abandoned in my grandmother’s…
Fruit Tree
By Camille Sherman I will plant a fruit tree and she will be my legacy. The neighborhood children will recognize her stature, her fullness, as a landmark. They’ll traipse over her fallen blossoms in the spring, ride past her on their bikes, see her from their windows. They will think she has been there forever, like the houses and street signs watching over their restless afternoons and summer evenings. They won’t know she was planted by someone who was once a child too. They will stand at her base and look up at her, thinking that she, like their mothers and fathers, has always been this tall. Camille Sherman is a professional opera singer from the Bay Area. She trained at The Boston Conservatory and the San Francisco Conservatory of music, and served as an Artist in Residence at Pensacola Opera and Portland Opera. She currently lives in Portland, where…
Humor
By Karen Handyside Ely When the day is dark humor will light my way. When the world crumbles humor will shore me up. Tears will flow, not from sorrow, but born of laugher. Nothing is so bad that humor cannot soften it. Nothing is so sacred that humor cannot humanize it. When the only way “through” is a walk of fire, humor will insulate my path. As long as we can laugh at the absurdities of life, we can persevere. Humor cannot change our challenges, but it can grease the skids, shepherd us along, help us to survive. I will face each day with humor and the grace it provides. As long as I can laugh, I can breathe. Humor is my lifeboat, my safe space, the fuel my soul runs on. Karen Handyside Ely Karen was born and raised in Petaluma,…
The Sound of Wind
By Su Shafer The sound of wind is cold – gray waves, frigid and broken, rushing up a Northern shore. It’s a hollow sound, like a flute without music. An echo undying. Emptiness longing to be filled. A mournful wail unanswered. The despairing lamentation of invisible hands searching, sweeping ahead blindly. Dry leaves scuttle sideways like old crabs on stick legs. They rattle their empty claws at its passing, then lay still. Su Shafer is a creative writer and sometime poet who lives in the Pacific Northwest, where flannel shirts are acceptable as formal wear and strong coffee is a way of life. There, in a small Baba Yaga house perched near the entrance to The Hidden Forest, odd characters are brewing with the morning cup, and a strange new world is beginning to take shape . . .
A Life Not Unencumbered
By Ken Delpit A life without encumbrances, now that would be something. Can there possibly be such a thing? Among mortal human beings, it is hard to see how. Living encourages encumbrances. Living entails encumbrances. To live is to be encumbered. Encumbrances are the baggage fees that we pay for our journey. Encumbrance-free living for most ordinary humans is a foreign concept. For some, it may be a distant dream. For many or most, though, it is beside the point. For these folks, navigating the encumbrances is what life is about. “Next,” as a primal motivating force. Where to go next, what to do next, what to think next. The trouble with navigating head-down from a mental map, however detailed or vague the map, is that it necessitates a removal of self from the process. You are not the observant traveler. You are the bus driver. You transport yourself here…
Blessings
By Cheryl Moore Despite the pandemic, despite the looming drought, despite the growing tensions in the world—we are living in a wonderful time. On clear mornings, I see the warm pink in the eastern sky where the sun is about to rise. This time of year, April, it rises between two tall palms across the street—in June it will rise behind Sonoma Mountain. This is the most beautiful time in the garden —leaves on trees just breaking open, giving a lacy feel against the blue skies. Rose buds are opening and iris unfolding on their tall stalks. California poppies are everywhere and fields are full of mustard. Bird song fills the air as males find mates and begin nest building. Soon there will be small yellow ducklings trailing their parents down at the river and fishermen will sit on the bank to see what the incoming tide will bring. Besides…
Waking Up on a Spring Morning
By Deb Fenwick On spring mornings, after a long brittle winter, the truth is everywhere. It begins at dawn. Not that I wake up that early anymore. These days, I sleep until the sun is high in the warm sky. But I remember thirty years of sunrise drives—drives where a glowing, golden-pink ribbon stretched languidly across Lake Michigan. Like it had all the time in the world. Unhurried. Unlike me. The sky had no need to rush to work. To meet deadlines. To prove its worth. From the driver’s seat, I watched the morning clouds, dumbstruck some days, because they seemed to delight in their own essence. Those early morning skies seemed, somehow, to speak to something truer than the life I was living at the time. In those days, I didn’t have time for walks where I watched the earth wake up to its magnificent self. The glory song…
Hello, how ARE you?
By Sharmila Rao Writing Prompt on The Isolation Journals: How ARE you? What happened yesterday evening motivated me to attempt this prompt. I dropped in to meet one of my friends whom I was seeing after a year because of the Covid protocols. She is a cancer survivor and I had gotten closer to her during this challenging journey of hers. We exchanged the usual pleasantries and she replied I am fine, Sharmila. I could see her eyes were saying something else though. As we got talking about the past year and how it has affected each one us, I told her of the many changes I have begun to incorporate in my life, one of them being giving due priority to myself—something I felt I had seriously lacked all my life. The moment I mentioned this to her I was taken aback by her soft almost immediate plea to…
The Nyx Café
By Ron Salisbury Day stood by our table with her eager smile,pad and pen at ready. “Today we only have two specials,” she said.“The first one includes an amuse bouche;one hour and a half of good sleep. Upon wakingyou wonder why? Then realize you’re still dampfrom a hot flash. The appetizer is a couple of hourswhen the pillows are too soft, too hard, or both,the bed clothes too heavy, cramp in your big toe,wondering if you should call the doctor aboutthat little pain in your side. Suddenly you realizeyou have been asleep because of the dream you hadfilled with people you absolutely don’t know.The main course is filled with noise—traffic, butyou live on a cul-de-sac, the overhead fan butit’s not on, a strange hum from the kitchen,the dogs rushing downstairs and you get upto check and find them both at their water bowls,you might as well see if the doors are locked….