mark holmgren | digital artist and writer

Poem for Grandfather Carlson

2010-08-18T10:33:00.000-08:00

1
We count stars
as if tabulation can explain darkness.

We prefer to hope we are here
because of a stonecutter’s error
even as our eyes trace the truth
precisely carved.

2
In this mist we feel what we cannot see
we fear what touches heart bone and soul:
ghosts of possibilities.

3
Here we are
in the presence of what we have
never known but have always questioned
united as we are divided
as if each of us
were the wing of a cricket
the cricket being something else
altogether

Envy

2010-08-18T10:01:00.000-08:00

The branches of the apple tree
bob and sway as cousins play
who can climb the highest.

Blossoms float gently to the lawn.
I turn my chair away as if line of vision
might somehow defer tragedy.

Now, the tree stands empty, its leaves
suspended in evening sun.
I turn my chair around

and watch the fading light
filter through in thin streams,
green as envy.

copyright2010 mark holmgren

Dance

2010-07-30T14:49:00.000-08:00

SUNFLOWERS - JULY 2010

2010-07-21T19:37:00.001-08:00

NUDE - JULY 2010

2010-07-20T19:49:00.004-08:00

FACE THE MUSIC - JULY 2010

2010-07-20T19:47:00.001-08:00

GODDESS - JULY 2010

2010-07-20T19:44:00.004-08:00

BIRD SERIES - JULY 2010

2010-07-20T19:41:00.003-08:00

Lip Service

2010-06-27T13:30:00.008-08:00

Music

2010-06-27T13:30:00.006-08:00

Creatures

2010-06-27T13:28:00.000-08:00

PATH

2010-05-19T11:24:00.001-08:00

by Mark Holmgren

Untitled

2010-04-15T19:12:00.001-08:00

Untitled

2010-04-15T19:09:00.001-08:00

Future

2010-01-01T10:58:00.000-09:00

collaboration: Ruth and Mark Holmgren

Convergence

2009-12-31T19:52:00.003-09:00

Original Photo: Ruth Holmgren
Effects: Mark Holmgren

e-commerce

2009-12-25T03:36:00.001-09:00

TAKEN ON THE ROAD SOMEWHERE BETWEEN TAMPA AND EDMONTON

Photo: Ruth Holmgren
Effects: Mark Holmgren

About New Work

2009-11-15T17:40:00.002-09:00

This work and the four following represent my experimentation with digital drawing. I have often incorporated digital drawing when rendering effects to a photograph, but up until it has been the photograph that sat as the foundation of my digital art. Digital drawing was at best an enhancement, not the main method. I figure these are works in progress or at best represent the beginning of a new or different style I will become better at over time.

another new piece

2009-11-15T16:24:00.001-09:00

New Work

2009-11-14T19:22:00.003-09:00

As If... in the music

2009-07-18T23:25:00.001-08:00

i believe in the barking dog

2009-07-05T23:22:00.003-08:00

for Harley, an one of a kind dog, may he rest in peace

I believe in the barking dog. He keeps me awake for a reason. He digs holes and jumps fences. He wags his tale without shame and cares not what he knocks over with his happiness. He smells things I don’t want to and when he smiles, the smile is pure, never hiding guilt, always a joyful expression.

I believe in the barking dog. He sleeps in the sun and shade. Sometimes when I call to him, he just looks at me with disbelief. Other times he scampers to my side. But always when I am sad, he is there licking my face. If I ignore him, he slaps my arm with his paw, then licks the scratch he dug into my skin.

I believe in the barking dog. He warns me of danger. The spark in his eye is constant, even when he is tired or sad. He does not need much, some food and water, a pat on the head, a walk down the lane. When he is concerned, the hair on his back stands up. When he rolls onto his back to show me his belly, I know he believes in me. Sometimes he slobbers on my pillow or steals the blankets and looks curiously at me while I scold him. I know he dreams by the way he moans at night, though he never seems to want to share them with me. I like the sound of his toe nails on the wood floor, how they click a message as he patrols the house at night.

I believe in the barking dog. He has sharp teeth that could kill me and a heart that knows nothing of such evil. He thinks I am a better person than I am, no matter what I do. He feels his life clearly. I think he knows that dog is god spelled backwards, though he acts like he couldn't care less.

Sunday

2009-06-26T00:58:00.000-08:00

reprinted from another blog I used to write.

It's Sunday and the day is bright sun, hot humid air dappled by a lone bird’s cry, and the dog's strategic barking. I have ignored the dog’s rants at passing bicyclists and delivery trucks. Usually I scream at him, achieving nothing for the neighbors but a barking dog and screaming owner. No one should be sleeping at 1:30 in the afternoon anyway. Let the dog shout and run.

There is work to do, but I am not doing it. There are web sites to build, advertisements to create, printing to arrange, plans to develop, a front porch to paint, laundry to do, and the second floor of our home requires attention, especially now that I cleaned the first floor yesterday. There might even be some jealously involved.

I should phone my children – both adults now – just to say hello, to hear about their latest adventures, but I won’t. Not today. I should talk to our youngest son about yesterday’s behaviour – his and mine – and work through it, but all I have done so far is revoke the punishment of no computer. My small reconciliation.

The list of discussions my wife and I should have is a long one now. Between my job and her launch of two businesses, we seem too tired for dialog. Understandable, but I wonder if the list will eventually end up folded in some drawer to become a piece of history we wonder about in the future.

Today, I take my recreation in the pen, driven by a voice deep from the interior — so far away from here. I feel like I am writing aimlessly, but I know better. Perhaps the movement of the pen will shake me free, allow the voice to emerge from its cavernous hideout to mark the page with eloquent, powerful meaning.

Is it birth I seek? Am I that ordinary? I think not; the metaphor is too simple, the image too predictable, and — now don't take this the wrong way — somehow too feminine. In the midst of this quiet confusion, I do find some things to be clear. For example, the distant voice has a duality to it. It is simultaneously my voice (pure albeit muffled) and not my voice at all (foreign and obnoxious). Of course, this observation — or is it a realization? — could be little more than the ploy of my imagination or perhaps a sublimation.

Is there something I am avoiding? Of course, that's the wrong question, a scheme to move me sideways instead of forward. Such are questions: tools to unearth discovery and change, yet devices we use to cover up what is essential for true inquiry. What I am is but one more artist no one will know in the way artists crave to be known. Not fame; please, don't insult me. Fame is distortion, pleasant at times no doubt, but it offers nothing but image and ultimately failure.

Ah, yes, the voice. Back to the voice. I'm sure you can hear it, too. And it is likely the very same voice, the difference being in what we hear, how we respond, how it vibrates our bellies, how it never wanes to silence in the same way.

Yesterday I cleaned the house for three years (ok, I mean “hours”), with blues and rock and roll on the stereo. I took my time. I turned away feelings that would lead me to do something else. I worked at a steady pace, not too fast, not too slow. I swept, I vacuumed, did dishes, started laundry, put things away, took out trash, cleaned the bathroom, washed all the floors, and when I was done, I savoured those few moments of accomplishment before resigning myself to the inevitable return of the chores. Life is dirty and messy. We can’t really clean it up. We can just deploy stop-gap measures – the best we can do.

I wonder if I am doing the best I can do. I figure it depends on the question. Sometimes I am the best I can be. Often, not.

Sometimes, I watch my wife. I watch her walk across a room or take in her face as she sleeps on the couch during a television show. I am always aware of loving her, though often I am uneasy because I am sure I don’t really know her as well as I would like to or should. Does she really tell me what she thinks about things? Sometimes does she think back to her past lover, her time with him, and miss certain days, certain times when life was good and the future was bright? Does she really think I am the loner that I pretend to be?

Is it good to ask questions? I suppose in the long run it is, but sometimes I wish I were a much simpler man, without a voice within. Life would be easier, maybe better. I don’t know really.
But if I am to be who I am, I am glad I can write, put thoughts to paper, even rambles like this one. I am grateful for that.

The dog is curled up in the shade now. I wonder if the incessant chirp of the bird bothers him. I wonder if his thirst is ever bigger than wanting water. I wonder if he ever shakes his head at me as he wonders what on earth I was thinking when I thought I would make a great dog owner. And when he brings me the ball to throw, does he do that because he wants me to know he loves me and wants to spend time with me? I have to think he does.

Northern BC and the Alaskan Highway

2009-06-21T01:48:00.000-08:00

Poem for my Wife

2009-06-21T01:23:00.000-08:00

The booth was too small for a man like me,
my belly creased by the table’s edge,
my legs tucked underneath the bench
as if I might contort my body into comfort.

I remember sometimes I did not know
what to do with my hands – fold them,
cross my arms, let them float around?
I felt clumsy, but all of it…

All of it didn’t matter one bit because
you were there, smiling at me,
our eyes dancing with each other
as we talked about anything, everything.

I can’t remember what I ate,
other than each bite tasted of you,
warmed me like a promise I believed in.
My face felt strange smiling so much.

We walked along Whyte Avenue, close
but not touching, walked to where we would be
dancing so that dancing could be our excuse
for touching. How incredible it felt

to want to hold your hand and hear myself
thinking if I should, if you would, would your
fingers embrace mine or would you slip away
gently, not ready, afraid as I was of love.

Later we kissed in the car, pushing
our bodies together in the cramped space,
kissing lips, kissing deeply, kissing hope,
kissing with all the yeses we could allow.

And that was it. I knew not yet that I loved you.
I knew only I had to love you.
As I drove home, I knew that if I failed to love you
or even worse, you failed to give yours to me

my only hope would be that you be happy
and perhaps remember our first date in a story
you’d tell others of a man you danced with
and kissed in your car one night long ago

and how it made you feel young and alive,
hopeful and beautiful, and that even though
you could not love him then, you still wondered
how life might have been if you had.

SOMETIMES HOW YOU LOOK AT ME

2009-06-21T01:10:00.001-08:00

sometimes how you look at me
says i love you

other times you look away
as if to catch my eye
might free a secret
best left untold.

i feel your love more intensely
every day
and every day i wonder
what else you feel.

would it hurt?
would it help?

sometimes how you look at me
says i love you
and then i see your eyes close
as if to squash a regret

and then you open them
and lift your head.
you look at me and how
you look at me says

you love me
you love me

in one minute

2009-06-20T22:32:00.001-08:00

in one minute
60 clicks of the clock
i have thought of you
so many times
that i wonder how
much time will pass
before i catch my breath
settle down my heart
so i can stop time
for just a moment
and be yours completely
without wondering
what will happen next.

New Work: Secret Forces

2009-06-20T22:19:00.000-08:00

The Music and Art of Mark Holmgren

2009-04-19T08:47:00.001-08:00

My musical life seems so long ago now. I guess because it is. In the early 1990s I won a song writing contest which allowed me to play a featured stage and two workshops at the Edmonton Folk Music Festival. That honor led to other performances on CBC radio, on a telethon, and a music video through Project Discovery, which I don't think exists anymore. I have that vid somewhere, but it is likely buried in a box in the shed. My band, Early Warning, was featured in See Magazine (or whatever it was called back then). We made the front cover - a picture of us along the railroad tracks along Whyte Avenue.

Some say we were one of the hottest bands in Edmonton. We played all the venues, did our thing at the North Country Fair and started to get offers to tour. Then I hurt my voice and what began as a hiatus to heal extended into just stopping. At the time I had a thriving consulting practice and between that work, writing music, rehearsing and gigging, I had no time for much else. I was busy 15 to 20 nights per month. I was forty, not 20. I made more money consulting in one day than I did gigging three nights on a weekend, far more.

I think my band mates were disappointed, but in reality they were committed to other lives. My guitar player was and still is a research librarian. Our percussionist was really a dancer and committed to that life and then in a few years became a mother. My back up singer also had other aspirations. The only full time musician was the bass player.

I don't regret the decision to stop, but I admit sometimes I miss the life. I miss those magical moments on stage when we hit a harmony that sent chills down our spine or when one of our instrumental leads hit new highs and was met with thunderous applause. I miss sometimes reaching the audience with a song that touched their hearts and caused eyes to well or lips to turn up into smiles of joy.

I have always been an artist. I have published poetry and fiction, did my music thing (had two independent releases), and for years now I have dabbled in digital art. That dabbling resulted in a couple major shows.

I still create. I write songs now and again. A few poems still find me when a quiet time sneaks into my life. While not as prolific as I once was, I still do the occasional piece of digital art as well. Being creative is not a skill, but somehow a gift. Unfortunately for most artists, the practice of art and music is typically not able to sustain most of us economically.

But to be creative and to continue to hone the gift is not really something one can just stop. It just changes. We use it in our work, our relationships, and in our personal quests for meaning and contentment.

And of course, you cannot stop what has made you. I still know my songs. I remember writing them and I have many wonderful images of performing them on stage, wonderful memories of a crowd sitting on the grass on the knoll of the Festival grounds, looking at us, listening to us, accepting our expression, our interpretations, our calling. How can one regret such rich experience?

Most people I know today did not know me back then. They have no clue about me. Sometimes they ask about my musical life, my art, my writing. Once in a while I will play a song for a friend, but somehow I now prefer the solitude of such expression.

The other day I was playing with a video maker and I made this little video that features snippets of some of my music and some of the digital art I do. It's here if you care to look and listen.

CLICK HERE FOR THE VIDEO

I want to thank my band mates. Randy Reichardt (Guitars), John Towell (fretless bass and vocals), Andrea Rabinovitch (percussion and voals), and Dorothy Henneveld (vocals. I was blessed to play with truly wonderful people -- all of them I am sure fully engaged in their lives today.

As a song writer, special thanks to Randy and John. I was a good song writer and musician, but their embrace of my music and willingess to help arrange my songs only served to make me look better than I was. That's the creative process I think. Working together to get the best. Perhaps that is the biggest lesson I learned.

New York

2009-04-17T04:30:00.003-08:00

A while back, my wife won a free weekend trip to a conference in New York. She had some time to take a few pictures. I took a few of them and added some flavor to them.

Ice Sculptures

2009-04-13T12:15:00.004-08:00

During a recent trip to Fairbanks, Alaska, I took in an international exhibit of ice sculptures. I only had my Camera Phone with me (a Motorola Q), so the quality is not as good as I would have liked, but thought I would post these anyway. Very cool, don't you think?

Recent Art Work: Birds

2009-03-21T07:52:00.000-08:00

Portraits

2009-02-17T04:36:00.000-09:00

Ruth. Photo and rendering by Mark Holmgren

Mark: photo by Ruth Holmgren. Rendering by Mark Holmgren

Edmonton River Valley

2008-11-03T17:05:00.000-09:00

Landing

2008-11-03T17:04:00.000-09:00

Photo by Ruth Holmgren
Effects by Mark Holmgren

Near Golden BC

2008-11-03T17:02:00.000-09:00

Garden Flowers

2008-11-03T17:00:00.000-09:00

Photo by Ruth Holmgren
Effects by Mark Holmgren

Flight

2008-11-03T16:59:00.002-09:00

Proof of God

2008-11-03T16:59:00.001-09:00

Sailing by the Island of Angels

2008-11-03T16:57:00.001-09:00

Soul

2008-11-03T16:53:00.002-09:00

Lighthouse - St. Augustine

2008-11-03T16:52:00.001-09:00

photo by Ruth Holmgren
Effects by Mark Holmgren

Scream

2008-11-03T16:41:00.000-09:00

CLEAR AS DAY

2008-01-29T17:02:00.003-09:00

For Boris

It's clear as day. It was sixty-two or sixty-three. Oh, I don't know. Maybe it was the year Kennedy was killed. No matter exactly when, I wasn't a drunk back then. I wasn't this way. Only I was broke and tired. No work to speak of except for the day labor, working warehouses, clearing fields, hauling stone, basically doing what no regular working man would do. I remember shoveling malted milk balls into old waxed cardboard boxes. Old ladies in hairnets would scoop those milk balls out and weigh them into plastic bags. They'd fold over labels on to the bags that said "Dandy Candies" and stick them into a glue press. God that smelled something foul, the sweet chocolate and the hot glue and the odor of those old women. Those ladies went home every evening with glue on their flesh and in their hair, burn marks on their fingertips. My job was to keep the line fed with candies to pack. It seemed wrong to pack candy for children around the country to enjoy, to nag their mothers for, when here we were behind the scenes, paid the minimum, and treated like we were.

Once when I was carrying a crate of cinnamon hearts, a rat poked his head out of the red pile. I stopped in my tracks. I knew better than to just drop the box. I'd lose too much pay if I spilled the candy. The rat seemed to understand my predicament. He crawled out of the box, up my chest, and just sat there on my shoulder, giving me a good looking over. Then -- I swear he had a smile on his face -- he crawled down my back and strolled down the aisle, almost as if he worked there and was on his way to perform some task.

The stories went on for days about that, how I was face to face with the rat and didn't spill one heart. Somehow, that made me someone in other people's eyes; even the foreman said something nice to me. "That a way to be," he said, slapping my back. "Don't let no fucking rat get the best of you." Well, I guess he was trying to say something nice, anyway. It just made me sad, though. It's a terrible thing to have a rat crawl over you and to feel like you just have to take it. I felt lost being here and not somewhere else, somewhere better and, yeh, I wished I could be someone else, anyone but this sorry fellow with a rat on his shoulder.

So I came out west, where things were supposed to be good. But nothing was much different. Sure there were lots of jobs, but not for folks like me. I never landed a half-decent job, you know, something I wouldn't mind telling someone that I did. I washed dishes in Chinese restaurants. Imagine working all night with people who don't speak your language and who always sound excited and in a hurry. You don't understand what they are saying, but you have to figure that some of the time they're saying something about you. And I worked the car wash, cleaning the grime and grease off businessmen's cars, and my last real job -- that was packing diced onions into large green plastic bags that were shipped off to McDonalds and other fast food places. Imagine what my hands smelled like. It's been months and I can still feel them in my skin. The same thing always happened. I'd get fired for not giving it my all or coming in late too often. "You're just not committed enough." That's what my last boss told me. We called him Mr. Onion Head because he was bald and well, you know, owned an onion factory. He called me in his office and says to me: "You're just not committed enough. I have to let you go."

"Hallelujah," I say to him, and I was grinning, I'll tell you. He just shook his oily head as I walked out. Let me tell you, a man has to give everything away to work at a place like that and for a man like that. Who commits to packing up thousands of pounds of onions a day? He wants my life's work to be onions? Who's the crazy one here?

I could have gone on welfare, but I was too proud to go there. Proud of what, you might be asking yourself. You see, that's the trouble with how things are. People think you have to have something or do something to be proud. You can't just be proud for no reason. . Somehow that's just not natural to folks anymore. Maybe it never was. Can you imagine what it must feel like sitting there waiting your turn so that some social worker who’s afraid of you can assess your needs and problems and determine what they are worth to you in income? It's silliness, you know. Actually it’s worse than that.

People like me will always be poor, always dependent on people who make their living keeping folks like me poor. I slept in the bushes by the river, and I tell you I wasn't alone. There was lots of us down there: young ones and old men, Indians from the reserve, and foreigners, and, of course, men like me, white and mad and the scorn of decent folks. We mostly got along. We'd share what food we could scavenge but we also would steal from each other. We called it borrowing, but the truth is we took what we wanted if we thought we could get away with it. We drank anything and we drank hard. Sometimes, we'd get some pills and once I took a needle. Anything that would change things, even for a little while, even if it meant my head would hurt later. Anything. Anything

It's funny, you know. A couple of times when I was in de-tox, the counselor --usually some thin man or some long-nosed woman-- would lecture me about how what I was doing was bad for my health. Isn't that funny? Come on. Do social workers really believe a man living on skid row should be watching his diet, or exercising. Jesus, what does the system want, a bunch of healthy winos and addicts?

Doctors, nurses, social workers, counselors.... They’re mostly fucked up themselves, you know. They spend more time trying to figure out who isn't eligible for their help than they do actually making a difference. One time, I ended up at de-tox screaming about earthworms eating my brain. You know, I remember thinking that. I remember how it felt to be believing that. It's as clear as day. Anyway, I slept it off, got up, thanked the nurse, and made for the exit. The nurse tried to get me to stay, but getting sober was not a habit I wanted to develop. "You'll be back," she hissed, as if she understood the punishment of being there. I figured she was right.

I went straight to the Bosco’s and drank cheap whisky off of old White Cloud. He didn't like me much, but I had saved his sorry ass one night when one of my friends pulled a knife on him. The least the old Cree could do was buy me a drunk. From what I heard, I ended up asking a woman to show me her breasts and got myself beat up pretty good by her boy friend. I was a mess, so bad that the hospital had to take me.

I remember waking up and not knowing where my arms and legs were. Even when I looked at them and saw them move, there was this part of me that couldn't relate to them. I couldn't tell if I was moving them or if they were moving on their own. It was like I was connected and separated at the same time, as if my arms and legs had been replaced by someone else's in some experimental operation in the back room of the Royal Alexandra Hospital. I felt dizzy and hot, and I'm not ashamed to tell you I was a little scared.

I heard the doctor say I was lucky to be alive and then heard myself laugh out loud, but it was like my voice came from somewhere else, not from my mouth. I remember his big bearded face and his lips moving faster than the words he was speaking. Everything was out of time. Next to him, in the background, was a tall, thin woman dressed in white. She had eyes like black olives and skin that shone like wax does on M&Ms. She was wiping down the stainless steel countertop, and I remember her turning her head and giving me a small smile.

While I'm watching this woman, the doctor is talking to her, kind of like I'm not even there. I hear each word he says, but the only one I remember is "vegetable." Shit, I remember all of this clear as day. I swear I do. Them shaking their heads as they walked away, leaving me there like a piece of furniture in the room.

"Let's go have some lunch," the doctor said to the woman. "We've done all we can for this one." That's exactly what he said. And me? Well, I've been brain damaged ever since.

copyright 2006 - 2009 Mark Holmgren

Self Portrait

2008-01-18T06:12:00.002-09:00

Emergence

2007-10-07T20:32:00.004-08:00

For John Cserny

2007-09-04T19:56:00.003-08:00

when i heard the news
i went to the closet in the spare bedroom
sifted through the boxes i could never
throw away and though i rediscovered
so much of what i had set aside
i did not find that poem.

i am sure you would remember it.
we were at the donut shop.
you were turning pages
when the crumbs of an apple fritter
dropped from your lips and beard
to punctuate at random.

when i heard the news
my first thought was to phone you
to apologize for letting the wrong things go
for choosing to surrender
for thinking it was pointless anymore
to be a writer but worse
for confusing everything i was
with everything i wasn’t.

sugar sparked like flint
across your peaceful skin
but it was your eyes that shone
as they shifted for a moment
and then as quickly realigned
to finish my poem.

as a smile lifted your cheeks.
you closed the book gently.
i knew then you understood
as I know now how tightly
you would embrace me
as I asked you why.

What's Fitting

2006-11-29T07:03:00.004-09:00

If I could talk a million words
I would tire from thinking
I'd rather choose 200 words
And only say what's fitting

Blues in Transition

2006-11-21T08:11:00.001-09:00

small rebellions

2006-11-21T08:09:00.001-09:00

To Be Young

2006-11-13T09:37:00.003-09:00

for Ken Lund

We drove the dirt road out
from the Pow Wow grounds
toward Walker Bay. Once deep
in the forest, we stopped the car
turned off the headlights
and just stood there
pebbles biting our bare feet.

In that perfect darkness
the moon and stars eclipsed
by the warnings of ancient trees
we did what we came to do:
filling our mouths with lighter fluid
each of us lit a match and blew out
a burst of flame that burned
a hole in the umbra
which in a moment swallowed up
the light and left us in a darkness
somehow deeper than before.

Even when you read out loud
the warning on the label
we went out the next night
and the one after that
to deny the darkness
to spit our fire
to grin like fools

and to be young
while there was still time.

Untitled

2006-11-12T13:40:00.001-09:00

Celebrate!

2006-11-11T05:03:00.001-09:00

Portrait

2006-11-11T04:57:00.001-09:00

Full Circle

2006-10-15T06:45:00.003-08:00

1.

Clouds darken the sunroom.
Head in her hands, tears
sneak out, the dog sitting

underneath. He does dishes,
unsure. His voice fails him,
but mostly her, them.

The boy whimpers on the stairs,
afraid to play in his room,
wanting things he can’t explain.

2.

The house quiets. A dish clunks.
He sighs. If there were a clock,
it would not be ticking.

She smooths the table cloth,
says the dog’s name, who sits up, yawns.
Such pretense.

She mentions dinner as he wipes
the last pot clean. The stairs creak.
She pushes her chair back.

The boy peeks around the corner.
His mother opens a cupboard.
The man wipes the counter.

3.

Outside, cars rush by and soon
the quiet inside gives way:
boiling water, the microwave’s bell,

the Wok’s sizzle. Later
they eat in the sunroom.
Words come, the dog rolls over.

The boy’s small laugh
is the final adjustment.
Eyes meet and hold.

He says something to his wife.
She smiles and nods.
Soon their son will scrunch

his face and cite reasons
he should not eat peas.
They look at one another

clearly, each knowing
the right answer
once again.

copyright 2006 Mark Holmgren

THE MAN WHO NEVER WROTE A WORD

2006-07-02T10:53:00.003-08:00

He never read the newspaper or watched television or listened to the radio. He chopped wood at night and told stories to his children. In the morning he sent them off to school. Learn mathematics, he said. Learn to draw and how to think. Find that part of you I cannot provide.

Their mother disappeared years ago. He came home for lunch to surprise her and found the note on the mantle. He spent his lunch hour visiting the empty places she had left behind – in the closet, in drawers, on shelves. She had wiped down the top of her dresser and the shelves to erase the dusty outlines of her life with him. There were notes for the kids too, but they were too young to read them, much less understand her feeble explanations. She wasn’t mean enough to blame him, but she had lost her courage to stay. That is what she wrote to a five year old and a three year old. He did his best to cover for her, but nothing he said lessened the horrible truth: mommy was gone. Mommy was not coming back.

He found out later that she was living with a professor in a cabin somewhere outside of Portland. She had sent him a postcard, as if a tourist reporting back on her vacation away from home. There was no return address, but it wouldn’t have mattered. He didn’t write anymore. He dropped the card in the trash and said nothing to the children.

In all the years since, he never wrote a word. His children grew up thinking their father didn’t know how, but he did. He preferred not to write, but never thought it mattered to explain why. He was like that, just himself – without explanation or remorse. He seemed to them unfettered by convention, unaffected by the usual fears and agonies.

But he was like anyone. It hurt him when his children – having grown up and completed university --announced they were leaving home to make their way. They never knew how deeply he felt that, but he said nothing. Not even after they were gone.

During the first months he remembered things. He remembered the promise of marriage, how good it felt to be loved by someone for who he was. He figured though that his wife had failed to love him because of whom he could not be. He knew his children did. Children are like that. They love without condition, even when life is sad or hurtful.

When the kids were young he read to them every bedtime. He began doing that the night their mother disappeared. He didn’t really know why, but it made sense. Oddly enough, so many years later, he could remember many of the stories. They seemed so incomplete now, and it struck him he could do better.

So he bought himself pen and paper. He wrote words and drew pictures and sent them off in the mail to strangers. He began reading newspapers. He bought a television, though he preferred the radio. Eventually he broke down and bought a computer. He wasn’t sure why he did, but one night he searched the web for his wife. He found a photograph of her standing by her husband at a University fundraiser. He read the caption beneath it and then looked at her eyes.

It’s Winter now and each evening he chops wood and watches the fire warm his feet. He remembers how things used to be, what it was like to raise his children. He sits back in his recliner and smokes cigarettes while other parents around the world read his stories to their children about how things could be.

Sometimes he sends letters to his children. In the latest one, he wrote "I have written many stories now, but the first one was about a man who never wrote a word and never thought it mattered to explain why to his children. He was just like that." He figured they would understand.

copyright 2005 Mark Holmgren

IDEAS

2006-07-02T10:51:00.001-08:00

by Mark Holmgren

ONE DUCK

2006-07-02T10:41:00.003-08:00

In the glass blue pond
one duck stirs through marsh
cracking the clear image of mountain
breaking silence with an echoing Quack!
as if to remind us of the world’s fragility
and the unquestionable authority
of one duck.

copyright 2005 Mark Holmgren

QUESTION

2006-07-02T10:40:00.001-08:00

by Mark Holmgren

FOREST NYMPH

2006-07-02T10:33:00.003-08:00

by Mark Holmgren