Personal Stories

Dad where have you gone?Did you leap quicksilver into the last runof legendary kings – those eighty-pound June Hogs –that bashed themselves against the wallsof the Grand Coulee Dam?Or are you too smart for the trap of extinctionstill holding in the shadows of that damin the back of my mind – thinkingbut not showing much?…

It was long ago but that silence comes back like a soft-whistled lullaby with clean air floating in after and I could just give myself over to dreams – and see things not just in the clouds but down along foggy roads and in shadows of half-silent streams trickling in the woods and across the…

Song of the Lover                         I He saved her from the sea and was almost drowned to bring her in risking all to spare her but there beside him on the shore she failed no matter how he tried to force from her the salt tide lingering He suffered her to fade her body laid…

Jacob and Joseph of Krakow A tale by Eugene Marckx In the night Jacob was startled awake by a dream voice. It called him to leave his dying wife and go west from the town of Krakow to the city of Prague. “Don’t leave me,” his wife whispered, and so he stayed by her side…

a tale by Eugene Marckx In those ancient times the Mountain king, the River king, and the Valley king considered themselves brothers in the lineage of the Moon-Goddess. So, at last when the Valley king died, his two brothers along their retinues came to express their grief with the people of the valley. For two…

By Eugene Marckx Dale lived alone with his mother, except on nights when the banker’s top hat was hanging on her bedroom door, or the senator’s homburg, or the general’s roughrider hat. Dale slept on a cot off the kitchen pantry, so she could be available when they came through. Most days he’d wander along…

He walks between his metal shop and his greenhousefingernails broken at the edgeswrists coloring rust into the dirtfeet spread apart the old grunt way‒ a habit not broken off frommortars dropping In the metal shop sparks fly off the wheelsharpening a blade he may needto carve away trouble ‒ you never knowIn the greenhouse cherry…

By John Thompson I want to be the Lord’s stallion! Thick and broad and sinewed And of milky mane, Sun’s fire caught and flashing In my dancing eyes And hooves as sharp and shining As obsidian! I want to feel upon my neck The firm direction of His arms And feel my tensing flanks Beneath…

What if I could give myself a bit more attention? A bit more care? Maybe even a new respect by clearing off a bit of the old clutter? What if this alone could wake me – break me up? Open my eyes to whatever’s in the air? Find a new breath for this pair of…

By John Thompson Sometimes these days I find myself so full of joy and gratitude that I feel like I might just explode. That’s not hyperbole: I really am beside myself, wondering what to do with so much overwhelming energy. I still have my sorrows and grief, mind you, and my discontents, but even when…