October 2014
I taught at San Lorenzo Middle School in King City, California for thirty-six years before retiring in June of 2006. Phyllis, my wife of 42 years, and I still reside in King City. I am a life-long rock-climber and mountaineer. I've made numerous ascents in the Sierra Nevada and Yosemite, though my home crags are in Pinnacles National Park. Many of my climbing stories have been published over the years. One, Three's a Crowd, was produced as a radio play and broadcast on KUSF in 2006 and later made it onto PBS.
I'm an experienced Fantasy and SF writer. My novella Vienna Station won the Galaxy prize and was published as an e-book. It is available for Kindle on Amazon. I co-wrote The Man Who Murdered Mozart with Barry Malzberg a few years back. My fantasy novel Chaos Gate was published in 2011. You may have run across my Joel in Tananar, too. Most recently, Moonlight Mesa Associates published my Young Adult historical novel Dawn Drums. Please visit my website at: http://chaosgatebook.wordpress.com/
I'm an experienced Fantasy and SF writer. My novella Vienna Station won the Galaxy prize and was published as an e-book. It is available for Kindle on Amazon. I co-wrote The Man Who Murdered Mozart with Barry Malzberg a few years back. My fantasy novel Chaos Gate was published in 2011. You may have run across my Joel in Tananar, too. Most recently, Moonlight Mesa Associates published my Young Adult historical novel Dawn Drums. Please visit my website at: http://chaosgatebook.wordpress.com/
Borodin
-inspired by the composer's On the Steppes of Central Asia
Will never again raise his baton,
But the orchestra plays
Tashkent, Bukhara, Samarkand.
Wind is a thread
Hanging
From distant mountains.
Steppe grasses hiss
And sand,
More sand, blows.
A pony waits,
Feet together,
Head down.
Dusk drifts
Like a violet scarf
Across day's face,
Hush, hush,
Quiet,
Still.
Here at time's end there is
Salt
But no tears.
-published in 2013 by Fictionique
Bower
She knows the shadows of a certain place
Where every minute is an hour –
Green grace of ferns gathering dew,
Grasses poised for
Sun’s first touch.
Her touch
On my wrist
Takes me there again
And ever so.
____________________________________________________________________
Louis Armstrong - 1901-1971
Author's Note: I became an admirer of Louis Armstrong when I was a child. I was confirmed in my admiration of him in adulthood, especially after Ken Burns and Winton Marsalis explicated his immense importance to American music. -RW
A Conversation With Louis
Warm honey and lemon juice,
Just a teaspoonful,
Burst golden from your horn
Through the raspy 78's
Raspy years.
Can your smile heal Katrina, Louis,
That brown water
Nibbling
A dead woman's toes
After Brownie did a heck of a job?
Your smile is gone,
Though stars still rise
In southern skies
And your trumpet notes are honey,
Always honey.
First Light
Is fathers’ time
In Upper Pines Campground.
Rubbing wire-brush chins,
Shivering in sweatshirts spotted
With last night’s spaghetti,
Blinking like sleepy owls,
Not quite tip-toeing,
We nod mutely
As we meet by the bathroom.
A silent greeting
In our silent conspiracy of fathers –
For all the kids
Still sleep.
The days work –
Tent erecting,
Stove clanking,
Bicycle chaining,
Fish hooking -
Must begin, but
There’s time for one cup of coffee,
No sugar,
Drunk as sunlight folds
Down the valley rim,
Opens the birthday gift of
Another Yosemite day for all those kids –
After the coffee.
Then bird-perky Jon
Peeks out of the tent.
-First Light was published in Loose Scree, a British climbing journal
©2014 Robert Walton