Talking about strawberries all of the time / OCTOBER 06, 2025

 Edited by Malcolm Curtis.

 

 

Light and dark

The stars are high up, and I'm lazing about this holiday village. An owl calls and flies away from a house, while, rising from the reeds, fleshier than in the city, the moon makes its golden way. On a rock, by the river, a dry face of many wrinkles turns to me: See this boat? it was my man's. We were together like thirst and water, but one fuliginous day, he didn't come back. After a while, my son left home too; the butterfly doesn't stick around its caterpillar for long...
                                shell strings
                                hanging by the window –
                                marital horizon

  

 

Lifeline

On the wall in front of the house, an old man with his feet dangling towards the road. Sunlit or shaded (as the clouds will), he seems related to a piece of stone. He stays up there all day long, sometimes even at night, to be closer to the road and the angels. At home, there's nobody, even the trees have dried up, but he has this wall. His parents built it to protect them against the winters and the people, when they were listening to Radio Free Europe. In a shady corner, a ripe wild cherry tree.
                                lifeline –
                                from one thistle to another
                                hands and feet

 

 

Hidden paths

In the harsh light of noon, the woman’s hand over the eyes trembles like a broken wing She lowered the garden fence, so she can see as far as the horizon, where someone appears now and then, but never reaches her. As the  sparrows are dozing off among blue morning glories, the silence seems too hard to be broken, but a ship’s horn sounds and some ray of hope is flitting across her blushing face. Time to pull off the weeds on the pathway home again...
                                two cups of tea  –
                                coming at the right time
                                a cloud of rain

 

 

Waiting

Dawn. Shouldering my Nikon, I hunt along a narrow Danube channel. Poking around in the reeds, I come across a woman sitting by the water, a few rods and yellow water lilies aligned before her. We are close enough for a dew drop to reflect us both. She smiles, holding an envelope, but I feel her soul keeled over and her voice fluttering like a newborn butterfly says: I got this letter a few years ago but I won't open it. I postpone my joy until the second one will arrive.
                                I wait, you wait –
                                never enough time
                                to leave as one

 

 

Dust clouds

Holding a clay pot by the brook, a woman in black shroud asks me: What does it mean when you dream of an excavator? It was driving along, dragging the forest behind it, and the wild animals were running in the village, with their young in the mouth. Then, it cleared the graveyard for bones and dropped them in ash-pots, but my man’s wasn’t there, so I got this clay pot for him. In the meantime, I changed my mind.
A dream is just a dream. And yet, where does this billow of dust come from?
                                people on the road –
                                a two eye-spotted shadow
                                swept up by the wind