Nothing as refreshing as starlight

Where there is no moon

And not a piece of sky obscured

By street lamps

Buildings or billboards

The cavern of eternity above

Its effervescent sparkle

Tickling the dark places

Behind the clouded clumps

Of knotted worry within

Breathe it

Sip it

Swirl it over your teeth

Let the twinkling pin-pops

Erupt

At the edges of your brain

Where the thoughts disappear

And the spirits linger

Chattering

Wonder

That never wants your grasp

To tie it down

Expand

Be

Refreshed

By the none

And the everything

Bubbling up

To dance you awake

Again

Behind-the-Scenes Extra

I hope you enjoyed the poem as much as I enjoyed writing it.

A little less typing for my behind-the-scenes update while I deal with a finger injury:

Additional notes

In the above video update, I mentioned author Ben Wakeman dictating drafts of his stories during walks. This is his current ongoing serial, Daedalia. I recommend listening to the podcast version too. He’s a very talented storyteller.

Also, I wrote a little flash fiction story based on Scoot’s FFF prompt for last Friday: “Sculpture”, and the image above the poem. I didn’t finish it in time to get it into his newsletter, but stay tuned, because you will see it here soon. Watch for Stillness.

Bunching Up

Early morning quiet broken

By tiny flutters of chirp and flit

Sand haulers rattling by

An empty field

Its dusted path

Encircling tumbleweed

I jump and barefoot climb aboard

My red-coated soul-extension

Who meets the Earth

On four solid toes

Set down one by one

Long and cool

Only an exhaled snort

To punctuate a rising summer sun.

We breathe together

The lifting scents

Of dewed brush

Absorbing expectation

Through lightness

Of fingertips to nylon rope

Sweet copper to tongue

Confident legs

Hang unhurried

Until we gain

The starting place

Where heartbeats build

Gathering in

The slightest shift

A gentle shortening of line.

We take a moment

To lower gravity

Flickering curves

Twitch attuned

To molecules

Pulled jittering

Nostrils to lungs

Filling with fuel

Every muscle a match

Preparing to strike.

I raise my chin

He bunches

Trembling power

Loosened

He tucks, tilts

Ignites.

We fly!

Spring is for ponies

I ache for horses in springtime more than any other time of year. What is that about? Is it because of ponies and spring breaks? When you’re a child you say always a lot. Always, as if time stood still and every year was the same. I remember I always made plans with Roxanna for spring break, although it couldn’t have been more than two years, maybe three at the most. Mom would drop me off at six fifteen before going to work and pick me up around three in the afternoon. I was thirteen, fourteen, maybe fifteen. I had my own horse, but the ranch owner, Mary Lou, let me take out her perfect pony, Scooter, pretty much whenever I wanted. And ponies were lower, splashier, better for this kind of ride. Scooter was a round handsome little thirteen-hand pinto, comfy as a couch to ride bareback, no emotional issues, nothing but fun. And Roxy would ride her pony, NuNu. He was all pony, that is, he was wily, not mean, but prankish, all dressed up in extra fluffy mane and Clydesdale stockings. I rode NuNu only one time, and not for long, because Brenda knew if she passed him by on another horse he would be sure to leave me on the ground—which he did. I went right to the ground from his rump to mine, laughing, so much laughter! But back to spring break adventures. . . Roxy and I would set out bareback. We had on our tennis shoes, shorts and T-shirts over bathing suits. But we knew the shoes and tees would be left on the sand somewhere. No, there was no beach. This was San Diego, but this was low-class rural East County. We boarded our horses next to the sand mine where during the week the noise was deafening between the sandmine machines and the rows of cages of Mexican fighting cocks raised next door. We set out with nothing, no water, no sunscreen, nothing we would be sure to carry these days. Nothing. Only a trail ride in mind. We called it the water trail. It was the San Diego River and it only ran sometimes and never for long. We took advantage. Did our parents know what we did? I don’t know. I guess so. It wasn’t a secret. I am grateful for the adventures, but I can’t imagine letting my own kids go, letting my own daughter go anywhere she wanted like that, not with all the dangers. Roxy and I would drop down into the riverbed, under the sixty-seven bridge and keep going. Everything was grown over with trees and bamboo and brush, but the sand was deep and somewhere past El Cap high school, past El Monte Road, the water would appear. As soon as there was a trickle, we’d take off our shoes and shirts, leaving them on the bank, and set off at a canter splashing between the trees, no sign of humanity, only the meandering stream, the leaves and cloudless blue sky above, the only sounds the sandy rhythmic squelch and splash of cantering hooves mingled with our jokes and laughter. God but I am grateful to have lived those days of gritty dirt and furry rubbed-raw thighs, the smell of horse sweat, the mud and sunburns, innocent fun—and ponies. . . All in the stolen space between the complications of adolescent hauntings. The simple moments we grabbed before everything changed forever.

Behind-the-Scenes Extra

I’m still here. . . Thinking of you readers while I’m editing and it seemed like you might enjoy a new poem and an unedited memory. After you read the poem, you might try listening to Def Leppard’s Rocket, just for fun.

Much of Things That Can’t Be Broken grew from the same place in my imagination that holds these memories.

The unedited stream-of-consciousness block format was inspired by Eleanor Anstruther’s A Memoir in 65 Postcards & The Recovery Diaries. She is releasing a new novel this month, by the way: Fallout. I’m looking forward to reading it.

That’s it for now. I hope you’re having a fantastic week, my friends!

I am Barb

The vulnerable clique-outcast

With a wry smile

Hidden in dirt

Spewing a blanket of sly words

Sheltering her tender heart

In innocent animal smell

While bravely marching alone

Through a private hell.

I am Lisa

Discounted

Brushed aside

Never fully realized

Sandwiched between sorrows

She waits and waits

To give the world

Something unfurled and free

Something beautiful

It doesn’t know it needs.

I am Maeve

She knows what her children

Can do.

Her mind is tightly woven

Holding fast

To catch the wind of their wills

She has little time for tears

But carries a steady love

For an open-hearted hero

To rise above.

Youngest son

The unsung one

Always in the shadow

Takes the most difficult path

Not by design

But in the passive faith

That everything

Will work out fine

Even in default

——

Yet he is a hero

In his heart

And

In his realm

His every penny stretched

Across the clear blue sky

He holds up

Arms raised and trembling

Sheltering his wife and sons

——

And now this man

Has taken in

A wilted old friend

Who lost his place

We watched him bloom

On Christmas Eve

Right here

At our table

——

Bless you son

For the mountains you climb

You didn’t have to tread at all

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We dug a hole in the sand

Built a fire

And sang

And laughed

Together.

When the cold rapped against our shoulders

We scraped the aluminum legs of our folding chairs

Closer on the gritty edges

And stared at flames.

Minds one

Flames licking

Voices lower

Stars our audience above—

Until embers were left glowing:

Slow heart-beats

Down

Below the closing circle

Of our toes.

Before drowsiness took us

We carefully lowered crockery

That held our tongues

And cheeks

Buried

In silence

Beneath the sand.

We abandoned

The circle

Until morning’s

Hot Coffee

And Warm tortillas.

Uplifted

Juices of tender barbacoa

Sent us off in our

Separate

Directions

Full of the taste

Of the night’s

Fireside companionship.

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S.E Reid will bring you in, make you cookies, and pour you fragrant tea before she chills you to the bone with her misty tales of horror, ghosts, folklore, and fables neatly harbored in the navigable channels of the Talebones newsletter.

Before I read a word of her stories, I was impressed. I can’t help but admire a good clean brand image when I see one. S.E. Reid has done this, flawlessly. Her chosen imagery reflects the nature she weaves into her fiction and surely her life. And her website is organized and easy to navigate.

But it’s the stories she writes that deserve your full attention. She takes you with her to a place where you can set foot on the spongey coastal forest floor and then wander down to the sand to find a seashell and a satisfying piece of driftwood. She writes in a wide variety of formats, from poetry to longer serial fiction. A piece of flash fiction called “The Wager” draws you right into its atmosphere and then provides a good satisfying twist. She has done quite a bit of stretching through genres as well, from the tech-horror/urban legend of the short piece called “Hey Eye”, to the down-to-earth sci-fi of “The Shell”.

Talebones ✨

The Shell - Part One

Welcome, Talebones Readers…

Read more

2 years ago · 112 likes · 29 comments · S.E. Reid

In fact, her seven part series, “The Shell”, was the first of her stories to catch my full attention. This story is one that stays with me, and I love that. It delves into ethical questions without putting the words on the page. Instead, it causes readers to ask the questions of themselves, questions like: What is forgiveness?, Who can forgive? and, Who should be forgiven?

Reid’s recent serial novella, “Sayblood’s Children”, is a strange and brutal love story that brings an ancient underworld mythology into a tender role on the Pacific Northwest coast. It’s amazing how well Reid is able to not only humanize a rather uncuddly underworld creature to live and breathe in our world, but also to create sympathy for her plight.

If you like to wander in the mist and be a little haunted, but you also like a satisfying undercurrent of meaning in your fiction, check out S.E. Reid’s Talebones.

Talebones ✨

Home of the Ferris Island Tales! Short and serialized fiction from S.E. Reid: speculative stories with a spiritual, supernatural, or uncanny twist.

By S.E. Reid

S. E. Reid has three books published and more on the way.

P.S. Don’t miss the Smoke-mouth series.

A Star Stolen

Tossed from heaven, she clenched

Upon hitting the earth.

She rolled

Downhill-gathering

A crust of disguise

Before landing

Against a rocky shore.

She stayed,

A light-shaped memory

Locked away.

Molten beams churning

Beneath the crust,

She shined

Inward

Throughout the spinning centuries.

Until bowing dragons

Drifted in, dripping blood.

She shrunk

From hulls leaking dark souls

Onto an unguarded beach.

Wrath of leather and braid,

Legs churning froth of waves,

She hid

From searching hands

Groping with rope for a mooring.

Iced-eyes widened at

Her face of unnatural stone.

She was lifted,

Cabbage stolen

From a murdered garden.

Under skin-cloak,

Greed bound,

She was tucked

And muscled-away

By reeking Red.

Round and humming

Sea-wet plunder,

She was stowed

Under bench and oar

Grunt and gore.

Unremembered sprays of days

Plunging, rising, battering,

She journeyed

Contained in rage of rain

And howling.

Stern-splintered

And alone,

She spilled

Rolling below salted ledge

Under pine-shadowed hill.

Sanded and briny,

Bobbing before cliff roots,

She lay

A decade in decay,

Until mussel-gatherer found.

Shell-crack traced

By chisel-stone and hammer-wood,

She escaped

And lurched alight

With old-fox guile twitching bright.

Innocent no more.

It’s been refreshing already to take a break from novel-writing and try some new things.

This was written in response to fellow-substacker Leanne Shawler’s prompt, “Take A Chance On Me”.

I didn’t quite follow the storyline she proposed, but I was intrigued by the idea of a young star being lost and no one knew what happened to her, so I came up with this.

It was fun. I hope you enjoyed it too.