The Ocean's Account ... "No matter: we swim in an oceanful of .....story, but a tumblerful slakes our thirst." .............................................John Barth The ocean came to me with cap in hand. It wanted nothing more than to be the repository of every verb. I took its heavy hand and lead it onto the plains. Here, I said, everything can be spoken of. The ocean looked grave. It's all moving, it said. As if alive with its own death. Every story tells me this, memento mori. Sharilyn in San Francisco Sharilyn in San Francisco took my heart in her speckled fist and squeezed it till it rang with the final prayer. I looked at her face so hard it burned onto my screen. Later and later and later I wrote endless words to her. She broke them one, two, three. Sharilyn in San Francisco became then a bookend made of bone, a stanch and lively head stone. Our Life with the Mirror When the mirror spoke we tended to listen as we thought it reflected badly on us if we did not. Sometimes the mirror told us things we already knew. Sometimes it lied and in its lies were the seeds of unrest we first felt on tender mornings when our hearts ached with too much weight. And the scale whispered its own admonitions, about what we felt about each other, about how we go on, knowing only lies and self-centeredness. The last time the mirror spoke we stood up as one. We were ready to forget the mirror, its questionable intentions, its painted face, a distorted star. Main Page This site sponsered by