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Wednesday, February 25, 2025

Driving through Seattle in the pouring rain, stuck in traffic and only crawling through the concrete corridor, I glanced up and saw a murmuration of starlings. It was a bright spot of beauty in an otherwise dreary day. I  was refreshed. 

Essay: the second chapter of Why Literature Still Matters by Jason Baxter. Literature as landscape. Such a good chapter. We want to live in Beauty; we want Beauty to live in us. The connector, the bridge, between us and that which is outside of us is Imagination. 

Short Story: "The Man of the House" by Frank O'Connor. 

"The miracle had happened after all." 

Poem:

The Reader

by Howard Altmann

The book sat on the table

for years

before it opened to a page

exposed to light

for the first time.

In their new surroundings

the words trembled

shaking all meaning

from their assembly,

the reader unable to enter.

Then the ink began to run

past the margins

to the mahogany to the floor,

random drops collecting themselves,

expanding from within.

The reader saw fit to stand

by the window,

following a cloud

till it stalled in front of the sun,

sweeping its passage along eyes closed.

As the sky proceeded

to draw the ink from the floor,

affixing the once-quivering words

to the slow-moving cloud,

the reader read the page in the dark.

And when the day’s shadows turned in

for the night

the book closed as it had opened

without a hand,

the reader calling it a day

of prayer.