Leon Junction, TX

White dust of limestone mingles with the leaf mold of live oaks. The hilltop circle beckons with summer breezes and lingering necklace of Indian blanket red-and-yellow. The two friends stroll the evening and are drawn imperceptibly to the ring of trees. Their footsteps are as gentle as their natures, and fall soft among the ancient campfires and broken flint points of those who before, have passed this way.

A flying shadow brushes their legs and stirs the dry leaves. Go Jake; run on boy!

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Lincoln County, NM

The mesas are grizzled with

small cedars

And jut their unshaven chins out

into the valleys

of long-ago rivers

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Santa Fe, NM

He showed me how to spin a top. And spent one whole weekend, home from college, to teach me long division.

I learned to drive behind the wheel of his old car. He bought me new clothes for school, and paid for the fillings in my teeth.

We visited day before yesterday. He was having stomach pain; rare for such a health nut.

He called today. I sat on a hot picnic table and listened to the calmness in his voice. The tests were back. Cancer, lymphatic, intestine and liver.

How long? How long? How long?

Maybe a year, maybe the summer.

We stayed all night on the lake once, fishing and talking, as men-boys will. We had cheese crackers for breakfast. And when the sun finally rose beyond the mist and the flooded forest of old gray trees, we were the only ones in the world. My older brother and me.

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Cumbres and Toltec Railroad, Chama, NM

The greasy black coal-smoke is as tenacious as the narrow rails that cling to the brows of the cliff. It swarms into your hair, and resides briefly in your ears. Then settles upon your shoulders like the embrace of an old friend.

Kit and I take turns sneezing and laughing. I tell him of the far vistas his eyes cant see. His touch tells me of a timelessness I can only glimpse.

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Navaho Nation, NM

Our gifts to the People squat beside the highway

the boxes, red-brown and dusty

Their eyes are cloudy and shut tight to the desert gift

and the sun shines, red-brown and dusty.

Their doors fade in struggle against the gift of the rock

and the wind blows, red-brown and dusty.

Their yards grow no grass here; shade, no gift of trees

and among the motor-bikes and broken toys

grow the smiling children. The gift of the People

red-brown and dusty.

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Heres a few snapshots for you all. I drove in from far west Texas today, and my head is not yet clear of Houston traffic. Perhaps Ill have some more tomorrow.

Seventeen beautiful and bittersweet days. As Kits eyesight gets weaker, his spirit gets more vivid. We stumbled around high forest trails and ancient Anasazi ruins, clinging ever more fervently to each other; he in response to a growing darkness, me, in response to sudden recognition of mortality.

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-- Lon Frank (lgal@exp.net), June 26, 2000

Answers

(to the new answers page)

-- Lon Frank (lgal@exp.net), June 26, 2000.

Taos, NM

She looked like one

of those sweet girls from the 60's.

No curl in her long brown

hair. No bra under

her soft flannel shirt.

And, most importantly,

her jeans were baggie in all

the places

they should have been tight.

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-- Lon Frank (lgal@exp.net), June 26, 2000.

Lord, Lon, you always make us cry!
Evocative heart-squeezing writing as usual.
Our intense empathy to you and your brother and son.

-- Ashton & Leska in Cascadia (allaha@earthlink.net), June 26, 2000.

Our sympathy also to Brooke & Coyote.
Life is precious, and fragile, slipping like a dewdrop off a lotus leaf.

-- Ashton & Leska in Cascadia (allaha@earthlink.net), June 26, 2000.

((((Lon))))!

-- Tricia the Canuck (jayles@telusplanet.net), June 26, 2000.

Cancer sucks. My aunt is has been fighting lung cancer for two years now. The chemotherapy is horrible. However, more and more people are becoming survivors. There is always hope. Make sure he fights it, Lon. Don't let him give up!! Science is catching up with Cancer. It might only be a matter of a year or two. Lon, make sure he takes every possible avenue of treatment!! Make him fight.

Your snapshots are wonderful, and I can picture and feel each place. I can see Jake's shadow running through the woods, because my own Jake's shadow still occupies my backyard,...and often my dogs will stop at his grave and lay upon it. There, they converse with the ghost dog about squirrels and chipmonks and things that need catching.

-- kritter (kritter@adelphia.net), June 27, 2000.

Lawn,

In all the years of wedded bliss, it was the 1st time ol' Feeds the Fish boarded a boat with me.

We saw dolphins, uncertain weather clearing to vibrant perfection, huge bells of jellies pulsating by - sporting their purple geometrics and trailing dazzling tentacles.

Within view of her beloved El Morro, the five grandsons climbed down to wet their feet as they silently shared duty of pouring nana's remains out for the next great adventure. {How could those boys have grown into men so soon...}

The rest cast out flowers onto the the flat water, I still remember the gardenias and roses dancing as we circled and headed back for terra firma { though it doesn't feel quite so firma anylonger}.

I had an old embroidered handkerchief of hers along for mopup, and gave it quite a workout. Being a sentimental squirrel {my birthright}, I intended to tuck its tearstained uselessness away in my treasure drawer. Well, of course someone spilled champagne beside me {I didn't do it!} and I used the hanky for yet more mopup so someone could come boohoo and blubber in tandem. Shoot, now this thing needs to be washed, I thought.

Nope, the sour little crumple is destined for a dark corner, and someday the fragrance may help me better remember the time when we were all together...in a way...

-- flora (***@__._), June 27, 2000.

Shiprock, NM

Water in those days had the Spirit of the Coyote. Cruel trickster, it took away the mountains, and turned their bones to red dust. It fell and danced, surged and sang and leapt. And when it was done, the rock stood alone.

Longing for the Mesa, for the embrace of kindred stones, the intimacy of remembered soil, it has only the subsidy of wind, the corruption of light, to send its shadows searching across the dispassionate landscape.

Each dawn and each dusk, the light makes gossimer sail; the wind pushes ghost-shades out on their eternal search for peaks and canyons of bygone recollection. And in eons counted as seconds, the phantasm, the great two-masted schooner, is drawn grain by grain, to its inevitable reunion with the long-ago mountains resting beneath the waves of sage.

Or so it seems to the watcher from the road. As the same light and the same wind, send my shadow too, upon its chimeric voyage.

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-- Lon Frank (lgal@exp.net), June 27, 2000.

flora,

It sounds as though your last trip with your mother was just as I knew it would be. Thanks again for including me at such a time. I am greatly honored.

kritter,

Thanks for your concern and kind words. My brother is a fighter. He has made his own way for a long time. ( He lived on peanut butter the last six months of med school.) He will not go down without a fight this time, either. Although he has a pragmatic outlook about the whole business, he knows that attitude and will play a big part. And he started yesterday on an alternative medicine called MGN-3. It seems to have helped a lot of others, and we have great hopes for it.

---------------------------------

-- Lon Frank (lgal@exp.net), June 27, 2000.

ANASAZI

They knew I was coming

Why else would they have called out to me?

Last night I heard them.

Their voices came to me

Across the cold, thin air of time.

The moon was born; I listened

-- We were ancient, even when young.

-- Our wisdom was from before time.

-- The soil then claimed our souls, even

-- As now it claims our bones.

-- We lived by our sinews,

-- Our history written on the skin

-- Of women; our glories,

-- On the faces of men.

The air of night was liquid upon me.

My breath sent ripples our

Between the stars.

The voices spoke their lives:

-- We were naked, the silence of darkness

-- A torrent to our fear.

-- Yet you see our images; the color and forms

-- We dared steal from spirits.

-- We were brother to these stones.

-- We were sister to this water.

-- Their dust became the bones of our children

-- Its music, the rhythm of our lives.

The morning came from nowhere,

And everywhere, as it does.

But they had gone.

I did not know when they went,

But the shadows showed me where.

They know I am coming, still.

Else why would they have called out to me?

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-- Lon Frank (lgal@exp.net), June 27, 2000.

Thank-you for your eloquent sharing of places and times that live on in your lives!

.

Pearls on my life's string

These moments in time shine on

Some of white

Some of shadow

Enriching my character

Beautifying my days.

-- Tricia the Canuck (jayles@telusplanet.net), June 28, 2000.

(((((Lon))))) I'm so sorry to hear about your brother and about Kit's eyesight! You're in my thoughts and prayers.

-- Gayla (privacy@please.com), June 28, 2000.

(((Gayla)))!!!

You're alive and netting!!! ;-)

Welcome home, friend!

-- Tricia the Canuck (jayles@telusplanet.net), June 28, 2000.

(((((Tricia))))) How are you?

-- Gayla (privacy@please.com), July 02, 2000.

((((Gayla))))

I'm fine. My mom's had her 'spot' removed, my sister is doing better (although still awaiting treatment), and I'm on holiday for a couple of weeks... Yee Hah!

-- Tricia the Canuck (jayles@telusplanet.net), July 02, 2000.

Zomba Plateau, Malawi, Africa, c. 1973

Our borrowed Jeep struggled up and up, 10,000 feet up from sea level, we reach a plain with cliff-sharp sides and an incredible view. It's almost like being in an airplane, but with panoramic sight. Over to the South (?), there's another odd butte that looks just how I imagine we look to them. Eastward are the mountains that hide Lake Malawi (the second deepest in the world - it starts well above sea level and sinks below it). The world is obviously round from here... the horizon is so far it just fades to blue, like the sky. Then we start down the winding road to the plains below. Suddenly Mom yells "Stop the car!" She's seen a little waterfall and wants to get a picture. So we pile out and walk over by the riverlet. There, beside the falls in the deep green grass, I see it. I was sure that they had to be the imagination of some children's illustrator, but there they were. Little red with white polkadot mushrooms - fairy mushrooms! I look around carefully for fairies, or at least their footprints, but I see nothing. Still, I know that this day, this place will stay with me forever, the fairy magic lingers at least that much!

-- Tricia the Canuck (jayles@telusplanet.net), July 02, 2000.

BRAVO! ENCORE!

Trish, now that we know how good you are at "snapshots", we'll never let you rest. How about another?

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-- Lon Frank (lgal@exp.net), July 03, 2000.

Lon, for you...

In the prairies, the sky is often more exciting to watch than the landscape. The land itself is a patchwork of green and yellow outlined with the darker green of trees. The canola fields are ripening and the wheat has not yet started to turn to gold. The sky, though, varies from brilliant blue to white, gray, and black above while peach, pink and gold light the horizons. The clouds themselves look like huge cotton ball puffs when seen from the side, with an underside that is sometimes slate, sometimes black.

From near the top of a hill, I watch a storm come across a valley. First there is just a hint of clouds on the far horizon. Soon, there are huge black-bottomed clouds grumbling quietly in the distance, contrasting with the clear blue above. As the clouds grow and block off the sun, the bright afternoon turns to sullen gloom. The birds and insects are silent and only the thunders growling disturbs my quiet. Brilliant flashes of lightening break the dark of the sky and occasionally dive to the ground. A few large drops of rain splatter about me, but the promised shower passes by to the north, flashing and grumbling. As the sun peeks out again, the crickets and frogs start their chorus and a squirrel scolds a trespassing bird.

-- Tricia the Canuck (jayles@telusplanet.net), July 14, 2000.

Trish,

You must have been telecommunicating with me on the FRL wavelength. I had a few hours while visiting with my brother last weekend to just lie in a lawn chair and look at the sky. I used to love to do that on lazy summer afternoons when we were kids. Back then, we didnt have so much organized stuff for kids, and the summers just sort of went on forever around the end of July.

Of course, we didnt have cable TV back then, and with no air conditioning, we kids would never dream of staying inside, nor would our moms have allowed it. So, an afternoon would find us, lying in the cool grass and looking at the sky through the leaves of the old, old pecan trees which grew in the back of our place. We spent so much time climbing in those trees and playing under them, that they became as much a part of our gang as the kids.

We didnt go to movies or travel to the great cities. We didnt watch the Discovery Channel, or visit the planetarium. But the grandeur of summer clouds was there for us at any time. All we had to do was lay down and look up at the sphinxes and skyscrapers and grand sky canyons of our imaginations.

But the other day, as I sat in my brothers yard and looked up through the canopy of sweet gum and oak, I watched as high mares tails came in over the lake. They promised nothing; neither rain nor shade, but gave a depth of perception to the blue expanse. And they recalled to me the smell of damp laundry hung on the line, and the rough scaliness of a horny toads belly.

I wished my brother to sit with me and look at the clouds. I wished we could talk of kid times and my father who he knew so much better than I. I wanted to remember with him the time the wasps stung me, or the day we accidentally burned down the chicken coop.

But he was busy. He knows he may die soon, and doesnt have time to look at clouds. It seems that I dont have time not to.

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-- Lon Frank (lgal@exp.net), July 18, 2000.

Here's a snapshot from Seaside Heights. Crossing the bridge from the bay side, you can look out over the bay at hundreds of small boats and jetskis, each with their own white trail behind them. Just after the bridge, the road forks, and tourists always stop dead there, trying to decide which way they need to go.

When you drive into Seaside, you enter a world filled with tiny convience stores filled with every size raft, towel, beach chair and umbrella filling the sidewalks out front. A million gift shops with cedar jewelry boxes, thermometer refrigerator magnets, lighthouse ashtrys, and sand castle snow globes. A million bars and restaurants.

After finding the perfect parking spot, three blocks from the beach, you begin the hike...lugging chairs, cooler, sand toys, sunblock, towels, watershoes, boogie boards, and one good paperback novel. Walking across the expanse of sand reminds you of how out of shape your lower leg muscles are.

The smell of salty air and coconut suntan oils hits you all at once. Something about the smell of the salt air is envigorating and relaxing at the same time. The mixture of sounds, children shouting and the soothing crash of the waves. The lifeguards whistle. The boardwalk piers filled with noisy rides and screams and game hawkers tempting you to play, but distant enough to reduce all these sounds to whispers. I can always pick out my own daughters voice among all these sounds, no matter how far she has strayed from me.

Lay back in your chair, close your eyes, and relax. The cool wet breeze off the ocean combine with the hot sun on your skin. Breath deeply the air and feel the stress disappear. When you are too hot, head for the surf. It's always so cold at first, and you inch up closer to the breaking waves step by step. Suddenly your right there, under a breaking wave, and drenched completely with freezing water. Your eyes sting from the salt. Your can taste it on your lips. The water pushes you foward and back, and you get a work out just maintaining your balance. Jump over the smaller waves, duck under the really big ones. Ride the perfect one back to shore on the boogie board and feel like a kid again. Now the water feels great!

When exhausted, it's back to the chair, to read and relax while the sun dries you and tans you brown. Walking back to the car, you don't bother to put your sneakers back on, and about half way across the sand you realize your feet are burning, and go hopping from shade spot to shade spot. The smell of boardwalk pizza and cheese steak stands wafts through the air.

Getting into the car, you realize just how much sand you have on you and everything your carrying. No point in trying to keep it out of the car,...it's going to become a permanent resident for the summer. At home, a warm shower and shampoo gets the sand from your hair and body and bathing suit, and it collects at the bottom of the tub and has to be pushed into the drain.

We like to go to the beach every Wednesday and Thursday, because it's free on those days. So, at least twice a week, this is my life. In the winter, it's a completely different world, but just as wonderful.

-- kritter (kritter@adelphia.net), July 18, 2000.

Seaside. Isn't it great? Seaside. I've never been to the place you have painted for us, kritter, but I know it intimately, just from the name. Seaside. The floats, the smell of suntan lotion, the taste of saltwater and sunburn. Seaside. Leaning out the window on the way there, just to catch the first smell of saltgrass; sticking to the seatcovers on the way home, with sand in your shoes. Seaside. I love it.

I've always been homesick for places I've never

-- Lon Frank (lgal@exp.net), July 18, 2000.

I've resurected this old thread since it was kinda about him, anyway. It's been about 5 hours since I posted last on the "Sharing" thread. My older brother passed quietly just a while ago. At the last, my other brother and I, his wife of 40 years, and a dear friend were all in the room with him. As we touched him, held his hands, wept and hugged him, his breathing grew slower and slower and faded altogether. All I can say, is that he was a good man; the best of us, the best I ever knew.

It was different somehow, when my mother passed. You expect parents and older family to die, but I'm not comfortable with his death. He was one of us, one of the boys. And he looked like me, or rather I look like him. As I sat in the quiet room, large windows looking out on his beloved lake, I saw my own profile, my own face with his now so much older skin.

In the scurry of the next hours, the telephone calls to make, the "arrangements" to make, a subtle panic crept into the empty spaces of my chest. I felt a need to reach out to loved ones, an ungency to embrace friends. And so I've come here, and now I'll go hug Kit for the hundredth time today.

Lon

-- Lon (lgal@exp.net), September 16, 2003.

Incredible thread.

Lon, dear heart, and dear friend, please know that as the hours and days ahead of you pass, with difficulty or with ease, that we here, your friends, are with you, in our hearts. This little family that has shared so much, not just in words, but in emotions that are real, and felt, and shared with one another. Know that the love of all of us here, is with you, and within you, and with our communal eyes, looking out, and looking within, to comfort you. One of the beautiful things, for me at least, is those pictures of your brother, and your realtionship, over time, and how special it has been for you. Sharing that, and your feelings now, as always somehow brings us next to you. However silly that may seem to folks. You know, and we know, in our hearts, that our love and support is there.

How I wish I could have known your brother, IRL, but, I really did, through your word portraits. We all got to know him, and your love for him, and somewhere in each of our hearts, we feel a love, a vibration for that sharing. Thank you, for sharing, and most especially for being you.

As you must deal with what is to come, know that we are all there in spirit, loving and supporting you.

If there is anything we can do, please ask. You know we will.

Prayers and positive energy going out from this direction, to those in your family, both in IRL, and here as well.

Giant enveloping hugs to you kind friend, as the days and tasks ahead of you present themselves.

Know you are loved, and so was he.

Big hugs to you and Kit, from your ole Aunt in Arizona. If there is anything I can do, do not hesitate to ask.

Much love to you Lon, and to Kit.

-- Aunt Bee (Aunt__Bee@hotmail.com), September 17, 2003.

((((((((((((((((((((Lon)))))))))))))))))))))))

-- Gayla (privacy@please.com), September 17, 2003.

(((Lon and Kit)))

You are loved.

-- helen (so@sad.with.you), September 17, 2003.

Thanks, guys, and those of you who sent emails also. Bee, I wish you could have known him IRL also; you would have liked him. We will go back up to the lake tomorrow for the funeral, and then on Sunday we will go down to the gulf and cast his ashes over his favorite fishing spot in San Antonio bay. I told Rob that my other brother and I asked Richard if it would be OK if we trolled on the way out to the spot. He laughed and said, sure, the specks will be in, and it would be a shame to waste a good fishing chance. We haven't quite mentioned it to his wife, yet, though.

BTW, has anyone heard from Kritter yet? She's been on my mind for the last two days and I'm ready to hear that all's well with her. And Helen, read your email!

-- Lon (lgal@exp.net), September 17, 2003.

(((Lon))), I'm so sorry to hear about your brother. I know his death will leave a hole that nothing fills. I hope our love makes it just a little easier to bear. (((Kit))) and to the rest of your family too.

-- Tricia the Canuck (jayles@telusplanet.ent), September 17, 2003.