A Journal

By Louis Faber

What is he writing?
A story of the life he would have led
his dreams transmuted
reality lost in a nightmare
that recurs.
Where is he sitting?
On the small porch
in a rickety chair
while watching the old dog
sleep on the browning lawn
despising the sun
and struggling to remember
the smell of a thunderhead
the taste of rain
on an Autumn morning.
Is he drinking?
A glass of iced tea
too sweet, needing lemon
the ice melting
slowly, condensation
dripping on the page
washing away his dreams
leaving only a mottled
image of what might have been.
Does he fear the approach of evening?
He is sad at the departure of day
but certain of its return
and hers, sanguine that she
will reach out and pull him
close, will touch his cheek
and he hers, that her warmth
will enfold the western wind
and call out the stars
to stand sentinel
as his pen falls through
the rotting wooden boards
into the place beneath
where such things go
never to return.
Does he speak?
Only in words locked
inside his head, and she
answers in a silence
that awakens the sleeping moon.

Louis Faber is a poet residing in Port St. Lucie, Florida. His work has previously appeared in Atlanta Review, Arena Magazine (Australia), Exquisite Corpse, Rattle, Eureka Literary Magazine, Borderlands: the Texas Poetry Review, Midnight Mind, Pearl, Midstream, European Judaism, The South Carolina Review and Worcester Review, and in small journals in India, Pakistan, China and Japan, among many others, and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize.