Michael Estabrook

Michael Estabrook

Frozen River

Some physicists say (not Einstein) that time is not like a river flowing from the past through the present into the future but instead a frozen river no past or future no flowing of anything anywhere everything that’s ever happened or is happening or will happen is there already frozen together (this is not the easiest concept in the world to grasp) time doesn’t move just sits there in a big block of ice. So theoretically I’m in our living room back in our house on Northfield Avenue Mom’s on the sofa watching TV Gunsmoke or Perry Mason and I’m ten running my Matchbox cars up and down the hills and valleys that are her arms and legs and I haven’t a care in the world.

Michael Estabrook

The Bright Side

–for Alan

Some days the depression rolls over me like a rogue wave all feels like such a waste of time and so dangerous but we try to keep busy at least distracted, have projects to keep us occupied that helps a lot sitting around hand-wringing is not helpful. (We have friends in town, oldsters like us who watch the news all damn day long! I’d be up on the roof so fast your head would spin.) Fortunately on the bright side of this horror show we ’re retired have no children to shelter, feed and educate no jobs to worry about losing no classes to attend just go once a week to the grocery store just leave our “4 walls” once a week to go to the grocery store 7am during the time set aside for the oldsters hunker down the rest of the time and wait it out . . .