October 2023

Stories I’ll Never Finish #1: The Right Reverend

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The Right Reverend Edmund Williams Thorne had been banished from the pub for one year, three months, and six days.  He had done the math.  Sometimes he wondered if it had been long enough for him to set a tentative foot inside the Finch and Purple Iris which everyone just referred to as the pub. In fact, most people wouldn’t be able to dredge up its proper name if asked.

Photo by Amie Johnson on Unsplash

The request for him to leave came on a St. Stephen’s Day when he, the Right Reverend, had gotten deep into his cups and argued with the owner about a complicated and thorny Anglican church piece of doctrine.  This isn’t as unlikely as it seems because the pub owner had taught theology at Oxford for 20 years before abandoning the ivory tower for a working-class pub. 

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Anything Can Be

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Anything can be.  Aren’t those lovely words? Strictly speaking, they’re not true – there are some things I just can’t be.  I can’t be an astronaut, Miss America, or a brain surgeon.  But there are so many things that I can do.  All my life, I wanted to be a writer.  I said I would write when this or that eased up, or when I had something to say, or after my child was grown, or I didn’t have to work any long, or or or.

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A September Afternoon

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I want to walk hand-in-hand in a forest with you on a late afternoon in September. We’ll wear comfortable shoes and jeans along with light jackets.

 I want to watch the wind scuttle leaves across the path and catch the sighting of deer and teenage fawns;

The golden light is prisming through the trees and the light will catch your eyes like the radiance of a halo, magical and ethereal.

I want to walk along the river in silence stopping now and again to skim a stone or savor your lips.  I want to be wrapped in your arms as the air chills on the shore–and the wind kicks up.

I want to sit with you on a sofa in a cabin, cocooned in blankets and drinking mulled cider with a sliced candied apple on a stoneware plate making our fingers sticky–Mozart’s Jupiter wafting in the air, soft and sweet, rising, falling and then soaring.

I want to wrap you with my naked body and murmur in your ear all my secret longings.

I want you.