• by Robert P. Barsanti • Through a happy accident, I spent ten days on Kauai. Hawaii is everything Elvis promised us it would be: beautiful flowers, great surf, and barbecue. We spent days in a different ocean and nights under unfamiliar stars. By the end of our stay, all […]
Tag: essay
The Touchstone
• by Robert P. Barsanti • His father and I sat in the wicker chairs and considered Sunday afternoon from the living room of the family summer house. We sat in fifty-year-old bamboo chairs, with cold drinks, and the ticking of the afternoon soft in our ears. Sometime soon, he […]
Couch Surfing
• by Robert P. Barsanti • In late June, Nantucket sets us apart. For the rest of the country, and the state, the first burns of summer arise. The air builds a curtain of water, the heat pins everyone and everything down, and the clouds ascend into towers of thunder. […]
The Eternal Circle
• by Robert P. Barsanti • Thirty-five weddings went off this weekend. Thirty-five brides in big white dresses, thirty-five nervous grooms. Thirty-five wedding parties heading off to town, then to the Box, and then finally to a boat. All of those friends and family, along with their Greek brothers and […]
Books
• by Robert P. Barsanti • On this Sunday morning, the coffee is percolating, the coffee cake has been cut and tasted, and the newspaper is spread out over the table. Its various sections are weighed down by books. The house remains quiet. This is a house of bookcases. They […]
Father to Son
• by Robert P. Barsanti • At the Downyflake last weekend, I noticed that I took my coffee in the same way that my father did, regular with too much cream. He drank his coffee every morning with the same slobbers of sugar and milk building up on the table […]
House
• by Robert P. Barsanti • Things are getting ready to happen out of sight. The world is sodden in April: the snow melts, the rain drips, the fog beads along the wires. Blind white roots push out and break the frozen ground. The daffodils have pushed through the dead […]
Living the Dream
• by Robert P. Barsanti • They were out there on New Year’s Day. Four white boats lined up near the eastern jetty, pulling scallops out of the water. Two men worked in each boat. They aimed the nose of the boat into the incoming tide and worked the winches. […]
In the Divine Light of September
by Robert P. Barsanti The radio rolled out with attacks in Libya, a new iPhone in California, and a memorial service at the World Trade Centers before it muttered out the “Beach and Boating Forecast” and the tides for the day. Then I shut it off. Instead of the radio […]