Category Archives: Writing

The Scent of a Woman I Once Loved

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The Scent of a Woman I Once Loved

“Acrid: Unpleasantly sharp, pungent, or bitter to the taste or smell. Caustic in language or tone.”

I once told her that her scent was ineffably sweet with a trace of almonds and just a hint, a trace, an echo; perhaps the merest shadow of something acrid, the merest drop in the deepest sea yet still a foreboding, seemingly something I’d once sensed. She wasn’t thrilled by my description, although she didn’t really know what acrid meant.

Perhaps pungent would have been a better choice, or was my choice of words a premonition of bitter choices yet to come.

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© Guillermo Calvo Mahé; Manizales, 2013; all rights reserved

To Rosario Nicole Calvo on her very first day, at least this time around

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To Rosario Nicole Calvo on her very first day, at least this time around

So, Rosario Nicole Calvo, I guess it’s welcome to the world, one your Dad and I and your two uncles intend to make a place worth spending time in. Strange the things one thinks of. As I write “dad” for the first time, meaning your Dad, I recall how upset he once was when my aunts called me Billy in front of him. To him, that was his name although it had once been mine and in the hearts of many, it still is. But I gladly gave it up to him. Don’t think I can do that with “Dad” but I’ll certainly share it.

But, ….. how about us, … you and me?

I worry that you’ll be so far away you’ll never really get to know me and that the bond of love we’ll share will be strained by the distance, but I hope not, I have to trust that it won’t since you’re made up of so many things that are so dear to me, … your Dad, your Mom, my mother’s name; great expectations and great genes. Your uncles. How lucky can one little girl be?

Usually on the day before your Dad’s birthday, and your uncles’ birthdays, I write a note bidding farewell to the person I’d so loved during the year then ending, … but, as on their first days on this pretty globe, that won’t work today, instead, there’s a tiny thread unrolling from an infinite coil full of possibilities, …

What an adventure, the inchoate embodied and realized. How magical.
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© Guillermo Calvo Mahé; Manizales, 2013; all rights reserved

Yesterday’s Yield: a haiku of sorts in e flat minor

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Yesterday’s Yield: a haiku of sorts in e flat minor

I woke before the dawn, surprisingly refreshed and in a good mood after a tumultuous Monday.  I dislike conflict and stress but they’ve been with me as constant companions, if not exactly friends, and as often as not they’ve proved surprisingly productive.

I wonder what fruits yesterday will yield?

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© Guillermo Calvo Mahé; Manizales, 2013; all rights reserved