Beth Gobeil – p. 120

The Search

It was her hearing aid that vanished, one day, then a library book, lost, and today, her glasses are gone. Again. Last week mom wore another resident’s pair, and didn’t notice. We found hers on a nightstand in a neighbor’s room.

I rummage through drawers, look behind the bookcase, throw back bedcovers, check under chairs, and empty the trash to no avail.

It seems l’m always searching for things that can’t be found, naming the friends she’s forgotten, Iining up family, separating the generations, identifying children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren; filling in the details that have fallen away.

Now and then, it’s me mom loses, and I hold her weathered face in my hands, fingers tracing the parentheses of lines around the blue of her deep-set eyes, searching, always searching, for the mother I used to know, and hoping to find the one who knows me.

Richard Marvin Tiberius (Tai) Grove

In the Eye of a Whale

for David Swanger

September 27, 2021

Dear David,

Oh my gosh – amazing pic of you. Black hump of a whale diving under your kayak. Ashamed of this uninspired cliché all I can say is “Amazing.” You are so God blessed to have been in the eye of a whale saying hello.

25 years ago I was in arms reach of a Right Whale sailing in the Atlantic with buddy Barry on his 55-foot gaff cutter. Mainsail taut against stiff winds, storm jib only half unfurled listing, dumping gusts from furrowed brow. Port gunnel dipped into teaming ocean, my arm splashing leaping surf when out of the green abyss glided the black glisten

of a snorting whale. My instinct was to pull back with fear. If I had been prepared I could have caressed his ebony gleaming back.

Your photo splashed me back to that July moment. Thank you.

All the best, dry-landed and smiling, Tai

A New Day Dawning in the Quietude of Anticipation

Thank you, Pablo, for your photo in China

In the early hours of yesterday, the hush of quiet fills the dew covered streets with the yawn of inactivity, a new day is dawning. The fruit vendor, LaoLin, with drowsy anticipation, tenderly places his fruit, the sweet smell of citrus, a rainbow of orange, on display for when the city of Guangzhou will finally come to life.

All is still quiet, no honking, no hustle bustle of pedestrians zigzagging through weaving cars, no screaming sirens shrieking over vendor’s beckoning chants.

For now there is LaoLin in the quietude of anticipation. All is calm.