Once upon a time
lovers loved
made their vows
and began
their forevers
Wedding
Memoir
Cotton tales
Cotton in the fields
reminds me of Granddaddy,
his recollections…
farm community
in friendly competition
out picking all day
he would pick the most,
winning proud recognition
when his load was weighed
the landowners then
permitted his returning
after the harvest
to strip the remnants
for himself, gleaning enough
to buy shotgun shells
Cotton fields abound this season in eastern Virginia and North Carolina
Modern cotton bales, waiting to be ginned
Harvested cotton field, with remaining bits my grandfather would gather to afford his shotgun shells. He called this “scripping.” When listening to his stories, I could envision him in his youth, strong and determined, never complaining of the laboriousness. His words only radiated nostalgic warmth and pride that he was able. Eventually, he said, the boll weevil forced out cotton and tobacco replaced it as the community’s cash crop. In the Depression, Granddaddy was a sharecropper; my father was born in a tenant farmer house. Eventually my grandfather “couldn’t make a go of it” and would find work in the shipyard three hours away, staying in a boarding house all week and returning to his family on weekends…for ten years, until the oldest children graduated from high school and he moved the family. Farming remained his love, however, for the remainder of his days. After retiring, he and Grandma moved back home where he planted glorious vegetable gardens, one of my own most-loved memories.
Nightwalk
The Boy and I traveled long
stopping by the cemetery
in the waning October sunshine
to visit his grandparents
(hello, Daddy)
eventually locating
our unfamiliar hostelry
near the colonial village
the hour was late
but we were not yet tired
so we walked
the timeless deserted paths
anyway
in the dim silver glow
of the waxing moon
if we hadn’t,
we’d have missed
hearing the song
what kind of bird? I wondered aloud
until the telltale skitter
overhead in a halo
of lamplight
bats
singing to one another
in the dark
loud
wild
plaintive
notes
sustained
urgent
echoing
echoing
searing the night
and my shivering heart
even so
the evensong
sent The Boy and I
heading back
locating a different path
if we hadn’t
we’d have missed
the diamond-sparkling
darkling stream
under brick archways
a beautiful sight
a beautiful night
despite the chill
spirits so still
when The Boy and I
traveled long
*******
with thanks to the Two Writing Teachers community
for the weekly Slice of Life sharing
and to the bats
for their moonlight melody
and to The Boy
a constant joy
Spiritual Journey: Revenants
with thanks to Chris Margocs for hosting October’s Spiritual Journey Thursday. Chris invites our group to write about those who have passed and left something behind in our hearts, in preparation for the upcoming holidays of All Hallows Eve, All Saints Day, and All Souls Day. She says: “As a person of Celtic heritage, the idea of the thinning of veil between here and the hereafter on these days intrigues me…”
—Me, too, Chris.
*******
The stirrings begin with the first breaths of cooler air.
As September gives way to October, while the trees and grass are still green, before any obvious turnings of yellow, orange, or fiery red, they appear.
I sense them most often at doorways. Portals.
There, on weatherworn sidewalks, a smattering of fragments from dead leaves surreptitiously dropped—I can never tell exactly from where—comes to life just as I approach. A soft rattling, a lifting, a sudden swirling… the upswept pieces begin dancing in a circle.
Fairies, I think.
And then I think, Children.
Small children delight in collecting such things, bits of leaves, tiny twigs, acorn caps, a butterfly’s bright-patterned wing, cicada shells. Nature’s cast-off scraps of life. In the hands of a child, they become treasures, magical objects, if only for a moment, in the mind of the child.
Watching the leaf-bits dancing in a circle, round and round and round again, I wonder if invisible children are at play. I almost want to linger long enough to hear them laughing…for there’s a stab of joy in it that I cannot explain, a piercing longing, a wild freedom…why should I perceive these things?
I wonder, then, about memories, so like the leaf fragments rising anew at the portals as I continue walking through the stations of my life, here to there, there to here…it is real, this revenant of my own childhood, the child that I was, holding onto the treasures that were given to me, reliving the precious bits that remain. As memories swirl round and round, I delight in them, in re-immersing for a moment in long-ago moments with people I loved, who loved me, who sheltered me, sustained me, prepared me…and who are gone but never far away. I see their faces before me, their eyes shining. I remember their stories. I hear their voices: I love you.
People die. Love does not.
Autumn comes with its fiery promises, its contrasts, its losses; trees will soon release their fragile organs in hopeful glory of surviving the winter. They shall sleep until spring, until the reawakening, life made new.
I walk on, remembering, wrapping gratitude round and round me like a hooded cloak, still sheltered, sustained, loved, awed by the beauty that deepens around me every passing year.
The stirrings begin with the first breath of cooler air.
Dancing revenants of what was, hinting at what is to be.
Perhaps they are whispering Allhallowtide.
The baptism
Faith of a child
pure and bright
trusting the shepherd
for guiding light
*******
in celebration of my granddaughter’s baptism
by my pastor-son
“Behold our God shall live with us, And be our steadfast Light,
And we shall e’er his people be, All glory be to Christ.”
—Dustin Kensrue
Eleven months
At eleven months
you have two bottom teeth
and one coming in at the top
—you sometimes like
(shiver)
scraping them together
you blow kisses
usually to
the dogs
(you do love
a dog)
you wave hi and bye
after thinking about it
for a minute
you hide your eyes to play
Where’s Micah?
There she is!
you look so like
your dad
when he was this age
and like your Franna
you’re a girl
who loves a hat
My beautiful Micah at eleven months
Slices of life recycled
If the writer
observes the world
then the artist
recreates it
and the poet
preserves it all
Knowing yesterday was a milestone anniversary of my father’s death, a friend created this digital image as a gift. She took lines from one of my blog posts, Fresh-cut grass, written in his memory: Grass, though cut, always heals itself and grows again, and you are always present in that sweet scent. She used pictures in my posts to make the grass…here in these blades are slices of my first Christmas, the cross necklace my father gave me, a portion of his Air Force uniform, and a lamppost like the one that stood in the yard of my childhood home; my father used say that when he turned onto the street he could see the light of home shining straight ahead.
I’m in awe of the gift and its artistry.
A metaphor for life itself.
My father’s presence remains in the scent of fresh-cut grass. Here is Sunday’s poem, marking the twentieth year of his passing: September, When Grass Was Green.
*******
with thanks to E. Johnson for the digital masterpiece and to Two Writing Teachers for the original impetus to start a blog for capturing Slices of Life. I began by writing each Tuesday in April 2016, then every day each March, then for Spiritual Journeys on the first Thursday of each month, and on occasion for other writing communities like SOS— Sharing Our Stories: Magic in a Blog…and every day thus far in the year 2022.
If you are reading…thank you.
We are our stories. Let us write them and live them well. And bring healing to one another.
Twenty years
September, When Grass Was Green
Try to remember the kind of September
When life was slow and oh, so mellow
Try to remember the kind of September
When grass was green and grain was yellow…
(T. Jones/H. Schmidt, 1960)
I remember
our last conversation
in September
twenty years ago
you said you’d
been cutting the grass
and that maybe
you’d overdone it
going back and forth
with your mower
making a pretty pattern
—you thought your chest muscles
were sore from the turning
it worried me
—you were worried
about other things
but happy to be retiring
in two weeks
the thing about last things
is that you don’t know
they’re the last
I remember promising
to come celebrate your retirement
and how we spoke of you
having more time to spend with
your grandchildren
I remember getting the news
a week later
as soon as I walked in from shopping
with the retirement card I just bought
still in my hand
I remember that September day:
so glorious, cloudless
sky so blue it hurt
all the trees still green, sharp-edged,
clinging hard to the light
never again will September
be as bright
or kind
I remember coming home
for the last time
to speak at your funeral
to thank you,
my duty-minded, dedicated
father
twenty years
come this twenty-fifth day
of September
don’t you know
the grass is still oh so green
and Daddy, you are still
in the scent
of its cutting
Yesterday’s sunrise
with thanks to Susan Ahlbrand for the Do You Remember prompt with musical inspiration on Ethical ELA’s Open Write earlier this week. Susan remembered her own father’s passing with Earth, Wind & Fire’s “September”. I chose “Try To Remember” as a frame instead. The song predates me; I recall hearing it on my father’s radio when I was very small.
I still have the retirement card I bought for my father on the day that he died, with three workdays left to go. The card mentions that it’s a great time to be alive.
Twenty years, and that remains the great dichotomy of late September.
Play-Doh poem
If you didn’t know, yesterday was National Play-Doh Day. Thanks to Denise Krebs for mentioning this when she encouraged Open Write participants to pen an ode to a childhood on Ethical ELA…
It smelled so good
so clean
it tasted so terrible
saltier than seawater
it only came in four colors
back in the day:
blue
white
yellow
red
which wasn’t really red
but more of a hot pink
that made a lovely shade
of orange when I mixed it
with yellow
to make a beak
to fit my bright bluebird
with the little yellow nest
full of tiny white eggs
all of which I placed
on the air vent to dry
in the effort to keep them
and love them
forever
“KENNER :’I can make anything with Play-Doh.’ (1974 )” tOkKa. CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.
September = scuppernongs
I write about them every September: scuppernong grapes.
A dear lady in my church picks them from an old, old vine that belonged to her mother-in-law. She brings the grapes to me, knowing how I love them.
It’s not just the divine sweetness. That’s only part.
In these thick, green-gold husks are memories as rich and sweet as the fruit itself.
I pop a scuppernong in my mouth, whole, splitting the thick skin against my teeth. Inside the hull lies a cool primordial pulp, a velvety experience…
It is the taste of my childhood, of my grandfather, whose vines grew lush and thick by the ditch bank of his country home. It is the taste of belonging, love, sacrifice, survival. Of wars won, losses mourned, marriages that endured. It is the taste of reward. Of dirt roads, tin roofs, earth as black as night, crops in the fields, glittering with morning dew. Of dense forests, timbered yet returning denser, again and again, still retaining their secrets, bearing silent witness to generations rising and falling. It is the taste of seasons, centuries, epochs in their turning.
I grow older, savoring my children’s children, the sweetest thing I have ever known.
September. The month of my grandfather’s birth and my father’s death. The month of scuppernongs, ever a reminder of my Carolina roots and my heavenly home.
lit bits and pieces 