Off the fire road gravel the twisted pine roots grasp gray limestone through a dusting of dead needles. Two hikers sweat and slog into cool cerulean blue. Ridges fringe the lake. A toy boat plies the waters. Glaciers cling to distant peaks, glisten in the summer sun. Two lovers toe to toe on a carpet […]
Simple indigestion. A Coca-Cola to settle it. An all-night porcupine intestine disco dance. Even my favourite recliner, where I slept two weeks after the colostomy couldn’t console me with warm brown leather. 8 a.m., emergency room, sonogram after sonogram, IV morphine drip, three days on my back, then home again to wait another month, to […]
No cars. No trucks. No roads. 20 miles from the nearest town. A shopping trip anywhere two days, at least, by rail. Three times a week the locomotive steams in with groceries and visitors, shatters the forever forest peace with whistle shrieks, engine pants, coal smoke billow spark fountain, steel wheel on steel rail rumble, […]
Every day the coal mine. The eye-dimming pore-jamming sweat-staining black powder, the fetid sledgehammer camaraderie, the steam whistle unshackle signal. Every night the homecoming. The snow-white shirt, the slicked back red hair, the tenor lilt and trill with two girls a swirling blur on cracked linoleum, the piano jig thawing the frozen pine timbers. 55 […]
