…continued from, The Home, Part 2

3. Sister M.

I had no idea what was going on. Two mannequin-like faces in black and white, talking back and forth, so pretty as to be vapid, deadpan and zombielike. The nun was infatuated with what they were saying. It was all new to me — my parents never watched soap operas — they were always at work, or somewhere other than the living room couch, or generally on the go. The television stood on a cupboard in the playroom and Sister M. placed one hand up on the ledge below the volume button while the…

…continued from, The Home, Part 1

2. The Arrival

We turned the house upside down, not because we were rebelling, but because we did what children do when they are unsupervised. They get creative and make their own world and learn not by rote or adult caution, but by getting burned. We didn’t understand what was happening, only that we had the run of the house. My older brother and sister did as all dictators do when a vacuum is left through absence of authority. They stepped in and played parents and fancied themselves good at it.

My oldest sister dragged me to…

Now available on Amazon! A collection of poetry I’ve posted on Medium from the beginning. Available as ebook and now available in paperback. Many thanks to all of the support I’ve received from Medium friends.

https://www.amazon.com/Road-Yellow-House-Poems-V-Plut/dp/B08DSS7MQM/

Thank you!

Good Morning

Shadows crawl upon the earth
In their prime
Early morning
Early evening
They rhyme with their masters
At some point
Then fade into dark night

Somewhere outside of town
Cars filled with passengers
Move down a highway at sunset,
Spilling a dark traveling companion
Into the winter white ditch along the road
Passing a farm
A child watches from out the back seat window
And wonders
That cows show little concern
For the black form straddling their stride
In a frigid field on the farm

Only humans find
It mocking
To be imitated by a day phantom.

I…

In the hinterland where I was born

Icy waters flow about
Rocky marshmallows of snow
In the Aux Sable Creek

My camera in tow
Winter’s able light
Renders each image a snowflake unto itself

Animal traces take
Me down to the icy shore
And beneath the bridge where I once played

Drifts cut a sharp ridge
Through bare trees
Forming a ghostly trail of cold white

In the hinterland where I was born

Tufts of prairie grass sail
Above the crusted ice
Casting glittery shadows beneath her sun

But when the sky opens her window Of frigid blue And soft…

1. The Thing From Another World

It’s not always easy to pin down the reality surrounding an event. The universe provides a myriad of stages in which we perform our lives. When many actors and observers are involved in an event, each must play his part from his point of view, and depending where you sit in the audience, your view of the event is colored by your own perspective.

Remembering bits and pieces of the past and attempting to paste them onto a board in one coherent whole is a daunting task. Filtered by emotions and scars, creativity can sometimes get in the way in…

The sun was a flat disc against the sky — orange, sharp at the edges, without dimension. It took on a glow only as the earth moved forward and dipped into the light of morning. He pulled down the bill of his camouflage hat and scanned the furrows between the rows of harvested corn more intently, as the smallest of rocks and balls of dirt cast shadows. There was a particular shadow he was looking for, one cast by a finely chiseled point jutting from beneath the earth.

In another world, golden light shone upon a lone fawn emerging from…