Author: Frank William Finney
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Retirement Reading
I read more now than I did whileI was teaching. I’m not joking: I can pick and choose from any shelf in my study, sans guilt, sans deadline, duty free. I read three cats’ minds. And my neighbor’s lips. The first and last pages of Finnegan’s Wake. Listen, just before tea I read the tag…
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Hitchhiking in the 70’s
Impossible impasse: your guitar case kicks at knee level, one thumb in the air. Both eyes marooned on the taillights ahead. The callous cold. The gloves too thin. Red numb thumbs exposed to a curse the woods shouts out to everyone who walks near here this time of year. There must be ice in a…
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Year of the Rat
… sittin’ on the dock of the bayWatchin’ the tide roll away . . . (Otis Redding & Steve Cropper) We’re sitting on splinters, watching and whistling as the world falls apart. As if all we have to do is bide our time until the next tide rolls in to cleanse our consciences. As…
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Agrestic Ditty
painted in red on a pasture gate ‘Welcome, townie, to this ground, Though the grass be hay and the hill rockbound, let the cowbells clang and the spring lambs play whenever, wherever, however they may.’
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A Calm and Strange Uneasiness
The darkness which surrounds us completely bares our soul. Paul Valéry I wasn’t yet born when Paul Valéry wrote about the effects of starlight on people, Yet I too, feel strangely simplified. Tonight, the few glints between cloud and shadow above the buildings and billboards on the outskirts of Bangkok make me homesick for…