Photos and Words - I

© 2023 Steve S. Saroff


There was a day when I woke up and knew I was leaving. The absurd grit had gotten behind my collar and into the works. The sky was perpetually dirty, like an industrial twilight of broken dreams. People whom I had tried to love and befriend had become strange and cruel. Nothing was right at home. Even the coffee was bad. So I left. Highways became roads became trails. And along the way there were emerald lakes and silence. Like this place I chanced upon. I thought about calling you to say that there were no more questions, but I had lost your number, and wasn’t even sure how to pronounce your name. When I really tried to remember, I realized that what was needed most was to forget. So I did. And then the coffee, and everything else, started to become delicious again. - from The Long Line Of Elk

I was in Seattle. The reflections in the coffee were muddy. I wanted to call you to ask if you would pick me up from the airport, but I wasn’t coming home. And besides, you had used up all of the minutes on your most recent throw away phone. So I wrote you two love letters. The first on a piece of burnt toast. The second on a faded dollar bill. And I left both on the table, along with a tip that you would have said was too much. Maybe the words are still there, tacked on the wall next to the bar, or on the floor under a heater, and maybe you’ll walk into that place someday and suddenly remember everything. My words will hear your smile, and they will be happy.

All my life I have given. Often all I have. Sometimes more. Ideas, money, time, work. Here, I say, is the sound of owls. Here is the light through the tree branches, the color of the rain, the feeling of wind. Take all that you want. In the end, we are what we no longer have, and the memories that remain.

There was a castle in a desert. It was early morning. Here is where the children will sleep. Here is where we will cook our meals. This window will let in the light. It will be home. “Take care of me,” she said. And each rock is held and lifted. “Take care of me,” he said. Then there are ruins in a desert. It is early in the morning. The children have grown and everyone is gone. Did we cook and eat together once? Yes, many times, the wind says. Did we sit by the windows? Did we look out at the light and the stars? Yes, many times, the wind says. It was early in the morning. We found rocks in the desert, we found wind and cloud. And we heard the ghosts whisper, “I tried. I tried." — steve s. saroff Desert ruins of the Wukoki Pueblo. Abandoned one thousand years ago.

There were some chaos years with no clear path. I wandered and found dust. I worked and my pockets filled with dirt. In the nights the sound of owls woke me from the dream where the ones I had loved were still rubbing ashes into my eyes. One dark morning, at a highway diner, the server asked if I wanted more coffee. I was holding an empty cup, staring at it, and couldn't remember if it had ever been full. -- And then everything changed. No future is predictable. No road a sure thing. And the laughter we all need is -- really -- close to where it has always been: right where you will go. - s.saroff

October and the sky says storm, and the wind agrees. Let’s go home. “Home. Rhymes with poem,” as Dick Hugo used to say. I wish he were still around. I would like him to come over for dinner. Set the table. Take something good out from the oven. A small attempt of repaying him for all those vodka and Frescas he mixed for us. What I would give... Home.... it’s taken such time to find, and even longer to understand.

It was in the fall but it was a Spring day. Crisp. Honeysuckle and lilac. Gold and azure. We wanted to go everywhere. You had a road atlas of stories, and I had an old truck with a radio that sometimes worked. How many chances ago were all those years?

Like the wasteland years, the ashes rubbed into our mouth and eyes, the salt, the distance, this road was a way through. I had to stop to look back. I had to lay down. No one was coming... Then a car did come by. I stood up and the car stopped. The driver asked how far the next gas was, they were almost out. 107 miles I said. And they just were gone. Like most of the people I have tried to help they seemed to be in a hurry. I wonder if they got to where they were going.

After a day of rain we walked uphill to find wind and color and the laughter of children.

I was driving alone at night on a highway across Nevada. Tuning between the static the AM radio brought in and a distant talk show. The host was talking about forgetting, so I listened. His advice was to put a memory into an imagined box, turn the key of an imagined lock, and then throw the boxed memory into an imagined river where it would float, gently, away. But the voice on the radio was lost in the desert distance before there were instructions of what to do with the key. So all these years later, walking along the edge of an ocean where all my rivers must have emptied all their boxes of forget, sometimes I feel in my pocket for the imagined cold metal of what I can not quite let go of, and I wonder what I would do if the waves washed your rusted wreckage onto these rocks and sand in front of me. - steve s. Saroff

On the first day of Autumn I go and remember what should have been done in the summer. The maps that didn't get unfolded, the places we could have gone. Time gets in the way. No matter everything we did, we could have done more. Now, on the first day of Autumn I wonder about what was lost, what was taken, the Yum Kippur, the Sabbath of Sabbaths, the early snow that puts out fires and sends us to quieter places, to the books, to the words, to the memories, where we look for answers. - s.saroff

In our dreams we are both still out of reach. I tell you that you have the memory of a cloud. You tell me to forget. So I try to explain about mechanical parts and wires. You try to tell me about the cloud you are sleeping on, there above the trees. But instead of listening, I go find other broken things to fix. A bicycle. A coffee grinder. A broken water pump. I come back to show you what now works. But I can’t find you, and what I am holding becomes the rusted junk that is left scattered along the sides of the sand roadways of the deserts which I still must drive through. - steve s. saroff

Don't be impressed by what impresses. Instead, pay attention to what will never be again. The color of the sky from outside a downtown bar on a summer evening after saying goodbye to your own ghost. Or, that liquid sky, while working on a ship thousands of miles from land, thirty-foot ocean waves hallucinating into nausea with the salt and the hot wind. Be impressed by what is also close by but always different. The forever hills making you sweat going up, returning your breath as you go down. And those few memories that you can not shake of easy moments which you had worked for but which you did not know could not last. Those friends whom you shared trust with, and those times, at the end of the days of labor, basil, and tomatoes with garlic, crushed and sizzling in oil, in an old iron pan. Be impressed by when you had everything you needed right there, and when you were hungry with each other. - steve s. saroff

It was a time of floating between wanting and waiting while the rivers dreamed of melting snow and the sky slept with clouds. Pointing to Polaris, then four hands go the right, I traced a sideways “W” and said, “There is Cassiopeia.” I tried to share treasure with you. Stories and stars, and the comfort of peace. I had to use a dictionary when you said you were ‘jetsam,’ unwanted and thrown overboard. Then between your laughter and your wild smiles, I saw that you wanted a flood for the Spring sorrows you would collect, to plant again, after I had been washed away. - Steve S. Saroff

Writing Sampler

Dear Reader, I truly hope some of the moods in my writing reach you. But, if you prefer to listen rather than read, many of these stories and writings are available on Spotify, iTunes, etc., as well as directly on the Montana Voice Podcast

And to readers who want more: the best way to encourage the publication of my next book is for my current books to receive more reviews. If you have read Paper Targets please consider leaving a review of it on Amazon. - Thank you!!!

Most of the stories and essays beneath have been puplished elsewhere, but sometimes I post new work and move out old work.

Fiction: Non-fiction: Photos with words: Available Books:

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