As The Years Sail By
My college roommate, Guy. Some rare friends pay you a visit and you pick up where you left off after all those years, all those miles, all those gains and losses, and so much, as they say, water under the bridge; each a witness and player in the separate arc of the other's life, spanning from the youth of adulthood to here and now, smiling as the years sail by ~
This Time with Feeling
It was, for a moment, amazing. 20. In love. In Europe. So young in the ruins of history the traditions of life, with no thoughts of tomorrow which now, 40 years later is today. New friends ask, how long??? No way. It's true what they say . . . like the blink of an eye. I blink now, as you sleep downstairs, if only for perspective. Two children grown and soaring, a houseboat, two cats, a night heron who greets us at the gate . . . last night I said I loved you and meant it as I always do and you returned those words, that feeling and I felt it, holding hands as we still do on this short walk, in this tiny capsule of time that is ours, this long moment we share together, so amazing.
Falling Through The Cracks
Who are the tiny dancers afloat in this strange grain?
Killer Dessert
Killer Dessert
Honorable Mention – Flash 405, February 2018: “Greed”, Exposition Review
Poetry
The cheesecake looked sublime as it made its way across the kitchen floor on the backs
of two ant columns. The cat watched it pass. The dog noticed too and made his move
wiping out the ants and one black spider, but not before the spider bit the dog who fell
dead across the cat, causing a heart attack to the pensioner who’d held off dying knowing
her greedy nephew was already measuring for furniture, himself 82, that old buzzard
Judge’s Comments:
Have you ever considered the life cycle of greed, and how by nature it flits from one person to the next? Once you read this darkly funny piece, you will.
Guy Biederman is a SoCal expat who lives afloat on a houseboat in the San Francisco Bay where he teaches Floating Groove and Writing On The Dock of The Bay workshops. He and his wife Phyllis host Anonymous Pie Salons every New Year’s Day.
Floating house with rainbow
enhanced by my friend Dennis Bayer (whose house it is by the way)
If Salvador Dali Shopped Here
Life on the docks involves shopping carts. They can be a mysterious thing. At times we have an absolute bevy of them. At times, none can be found. Sometimes, shopping carts from Toys R Us appear - there isn't a Toy R Us for miles! Shopping carts help with moving groceries and furniture and and trash and recycle form the houseboats to the parking lot, which depending on where you live on the dock can be quite a stretch. And some people call them the South Forty Walker. Our previous neighbor and friend Adele had a small cart that stayed near her gate which no one touched - so it would always be available for her to lean on, to balance with, to use to carry things to and from her houseboat, the Dandelion - where we now live.
