What Remains is a latter-day road book, travel in the extreme – old man, old motorcycle, thousands of miles of old broken roads. Mountains and deserts and small town America, three hundred potholed miles at a time. Off-center characters in the out-of-the-way places where they carve out an existence. The grit and grace it […]
Author Archive | John Otterbacher
ROLLING
TUESDAY
“They’ve summoned up a thundercloud, And they’re going to hear from me.” Leonard Cohen Tuesday.
FINNEGAN
I doubt you know you are a dog, Finnegan. No mind for it, no time. No regret or rumination about this unearned life of privilege – kibble morning and night, a late afternoon hour in the woods. Nor it’s certain end, for that matter. Only this cuffed hand and it’s comfortable fingers, stroking an ear […]
SUMMER
I do love the return of summer, the soft rush of it, the thrust from ground to green, the mating serenade out in the trees, the buzz and hum of it, the heat and sweat and shedding of clothes.
WHEN
“When I was the stream, the forest, when I was still the field, when I was every hoof, foot, fin and wing, when I was the sky itself, no one ever asked me did I have a purpose, for there was nothing I could not love.” Meister Eckhart
MISSION
“Yes–the springtimes needed you. Often a star was waiting for you to notice it. A wave rolled toward you out of the distant past, or as you walked under an open window, a violin yielded itself to your hearing. All this was mission. But could you accomplish it? Weren’t you always distracted by expectation, as […]
DREAMING
“It is not true that people stop pursuing dreams because they grow old. They grow old because they stop pursuing dreams.” Gabriel Garcia Marquez
BARGAINING
Please tell me it’s not too late…
SILENCE
The woods are still tonight. They are not silent. Even as they empty me of the agitation I bring, they speak of a larger encircling self.