Larry Berger Archive

So, here is how I stopped smoking. I started when I was fourteen and smoked around a pack a day for twenty two years. The end of this enduring time began when my wife and I had a meaningful conversation with a young man who asked us if we knew why we smoked. We both […]

I woke up wondering, why is the sun shining in through a north-facing window? it was my big maple tree, bright yellow in its dazzling, autumnal display; the trip to town was a glorious drive, the sky full of falling leaves; windows open my half-finished poem flapping on the seat, I drive more slowly dodging […]

Richard was an uncomplicated man. He was living in an old Ford in a Miami boatyard and I invited him to sleep on my houseboat. He brought me a gift from his world, a hunk of rusted metal twisted into an interesting shape and flattened by a thousand cars and trucks on a Miami highway. […]

My neighbor, Homer, came over the other day with a WHEW! and a swiped hand across his forehead. “Did you ever see such a drought?” he asked. I was watering my thriving zucchini with the never-ending supply of water that keeps emanating from my numerable cisterns. “Oh,” I said. “You didn’t expect it?” I love […]

This road was once a buffalo trail. Why they came this way or chose the pathway they did, I do not know. I’m sure zoologists who study migration will have their theories and I will not question them. I just choose to follow the same pathway, and use my own animal instincts, especially because I […]

Once upon a time there was a little boy named Charlie who loved to dream. When his mother said, “It’s time to go to bed,” he said, “Oh goody,” climbed under the covers, and went to sleep smiling. His mother thought that was wonderful. In his dreams he could do fun things. He played with […]

Gun laws and gun violence are in the news a lot today. When my big brother, Wally, was about 12 or 13, he tired of blowing up the neighbor’s mailboxes with bundled and powerful fireworks, which were then legal and available. So he built a gun on our father’s work bench. We called them zip […]

I know this is just a vanity, but part of my brand is that old picture at the top of my column. I don’t even have that shirt anymore! And I always get a haircut in spring because I like to fly with my cockpit open, and don’t like my hair blowing everywhere and slapping […]

A year ago I wrote this rather obscure poem about the time and circumstances I found myself in, which we are all too familiar with now, the Covid-19 pandemic. The poem combined the new CDC guidelines with a little bit of mystery along with some old personal angst and regret. It was called Quarantine: I […]

There was Homer sitting in one of my lawn chairs looking ever-so-much like Rodin’s The Thinker. I was sitting in a favorite chair by the front window reading from my vast collection of fantasy novels, reflecting on the fantasy I was living in. I wondered if some of the novels weren’t esoteric histories, and then […]