A Ballad

It happened now in ages past--
A week has passed since that ago
When east coast lawns shared their repast
With green, whilst we had snow,
And waking he to seeing fiery red
Where brown and wire of chicken coop should be
Instead, he rising from his Sunday bed
Of sleep went racing out, bed clothes flying free
And little caring where they fell. Not yet dead,
There they squawked. Helpless, hot,
They crowded there and crowed
Their pain to the bursting heat, fought
Their neighbors the the coolest side. The road
Had not yet born engines flaring when he
Raced flames and clipped a door in their abode
Through which they panted, clucking free
And hurt not more than a singed span
Of proud-held comb. But he
Looked on his gold-licked arms and
Wondered at the scorch-ed skin with boiling filled--
For heroes feel not flame, nor stand
To see their Chickens burnt or killed.

A Lesson Learned from a Quitter Sock

You know how it is with quitter socks. From the moment you first favor them with the clothing of your foot they fit loosely and don't seem to cling to the form of your feet. When you first put them in shoes, they surely put up a smooth front at first, holding up until you speed up your pace, and then beginning their foolish creep, down your foot, into the toe of your boot. The temptation is to stop every few feet and pull them up, fixing the problem momentarily, and yet it really is a fruitless endeavor, ending in you dropping behind, constantly worrying, and continually focussing on the uncomfortableness.

There is the always the point when one gives in and must accept the quitter sock. To be sure, it is rather a claustrophobic feeling as it wiggles its way down to keep your toenails company, and you will notice that your heel gets cold as it comes in contact with the cool and slippery sole of your shoe. But then with the acceptance comes the ability to cope, and the determination to keep up, and the gratefulness for the other sock that hasn't quit.

Could it be that God allows us a few "quitter socks" just when we are confident that all our foot-clothings are new and in working order? Could it be that we take our waking moments for granted, our spiritual and physical nourishment, our warmth? Could it be that quitter socks test our endurance and enable us to wind our eyes around the trees and focus on the top of the mountain, pressing on and forgetting our discomfort in view of the glory? Could it be that quitter socks are an opportunity for Thanksgiving?

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And why not thank Him? Thank Him for the socks that haven't yet quit, yes, but thank Him more for the joy of the race, and for the mountaintop, and for the experience promised upon the mountaintop where we shall finally see Him, and thank Him face to face.

Frosted Shredded Wheat for All Three Meals

I am on a diet, apparently, one of those in which you eat nothing but the same thing again for every meal. And so it is frosted shredded wheat--fresh snow powdered on all the browning crusty grasses. For breakfast this morning, I looked out the window in order to eat it as it coated the frost-toasted ground and everything else. For lunch, I heard it patter about me in its cold sweetness. For supper, I enjoyed the taste even as I felt it blowing through my sweater and bouncing against me like the spitballs of some imp. Is it sustainable, I ask, or is it just a fad diet come to yo-yo my clothing weight and my emotions in their preparation for the winter to come? As yet, the research results are inconclusive. I only know that I have eaten well today, and that it has been delicious.

Paul Bunyan Returns

I met her when I was fifteen, and she was formidable. Dressed darkly, silver hair cut in a bowl-shaped fashion, big feet, a slow, wide, thinking smile behind which she hid herself. I was an oboist of five years, timid, lazy, full of complaints about my oboe teacher, and Sue was another option in the area. I don't know if it was the command to put my cold oboe in my armpit to warm it up, or the pointing out that I shouldn't use my own spittle but water to wet my reed, or if was the strong eyebrows convincing me to play more confidently, followed by the calm and dimpled smile. I had a lesson from her once.

My butterflyish oboe teacher did not become more beloved to me after my experience with Sue, but I was certainly more grateful and spent a little bit more time on my scales and silly oboe exercises, waiting for the times when she would challenge me with real music. And then I found the Windham Orchestra, an hour away, to which my patient parents agreed to drive me--a real orchestra, with me as the second oboist. The music was hard. And I discovered the first night that I would have a solo. And I loved it. And I was delighted with Handel's firework music, calling for three oboes, and with Dvorak's 8th Symphony, calling for an English Horn. And I wondered who could possibly be the English Hornist, and who would end up being the additional oboist. I was expecting some night to meet another flitterer like my teacher, or a spry chap like Zeke, the first chair, his long white hair flying and his stature proudly standing about an inch shorter than me.

When I felt a presence next to me that night, of course I looked up, expecting by the feel of darkness and height to see a man. And when I had, I wished I hadn't. I wanted to shrink. It was Sue towering there, the same , slow smile stretching out her face as she recognized me and took her seat next to me as English Hornist and as third oboist.

She was still formidable. All she needed was an axe slung over her stout shoulder and a California Redwood rooted in defiance before her. But her solemn solos began to charm me. She was the first English Hornist I had met, and my fascination with her eerie tone gradually melted away her darkness. And when I learned that I had a solo two measures after hers ended and that I wouldn't have to count until then, she became an instant friend of mine. I marveled at her thick fingers maneuvering through the tricks of Handel, and I was amused at her bushy eyebrows going up and down with the lilting haunt of the English Horn and Dvorak.

I have not seen her in four years now, and had once again almost forgotten about Sue, the rebel oboist who had stolidly propped herself up next to me, her large and dependable embrasure making the big English Horn look small between her knees. I am a bit taller than I was then, definitely thicker, wearing dark pants and a gray shirt. Hair still light though, eyes still blue, feeling so small behind the new acquaintance of the big English Horn that I could perhaps hide behind it, except for my glowing red face and puffing cheeks. And then I saw her--Paul Bunyan, as my brother and I dubbed her--sitting there in the back of my head, her foot thumping inaudibly as the time for my solo came, her smile telling me to play more confidently, and her eyebrows going up and down for expression. Yes, Paul Bunyan has returned, just in time for the last couple rehearsals before the concert. And I hope she'll stick around.

When Not to be Thrifty

Three mornings a week, I meet the now bundled grounds workers as I walk back from the pool, watching them as they blow leaves off the sidewalks in a futile effort to keep them clear for the next ten users, no, for their own feet on windy days.

It's almost as if I must race the busy-bodies out in the mornings in order to feel the leaves under my feet and to see them sprawled and scuttling across the cold grass and cement. Each morning I fear that they will have stolen my wealth before my eyes can feast on it again, but as yet, the enormity of the task seems to have stumped them--they dare not touch the golden tree next to Nethery, the circle of color beneath it a witness of the thousands of leaves it burst forth in the spring, bore through the summer, and now bequeaths to the grass-loving bugs as their part of the inheritance, casually tinkling the golden plates as if they are common, as if they are only flecks of fools gold some child might be attracted to.

I durst not think I am the only one who benefits from such prodigality, and yet one does have to beat the darkness-blinded leaf-blowers to the leaves, just as one must dash in front of the wind to the sky before it gusts away the morning-pink clouds in order to feel them deeply...

Annie Dillard writes in Pilgrim at Tinker Creek about taking time as a child to stop and pick up pennies as small treasures of wealth, enjoy them, and then go hide them for someone else to find--what a rebuke to my hoarding self. Shall I not begin to expose my pocketed coins to the world? Perhaps I will begin by taping a bunch of golden leaves to my window, that others too might find themselves not rained upon with snow, but with brightness.

What the Corn Revealed

To me it seems I was here
before leaves drowned the trails
with rusty gold; weeks past,
wandering about in a green woods
and green corn towering
above my head, knowing not
particularly where I was, but
in search of some connecting tromp
of tracks to take me home, a loop.
Even my feet laugh now--
but for the corn might I
have seen this edge of field,
clogged tread with mud as today
in finding the desired leg of trail
bleeding with leaves as if shot
and amputated from one of the deer
that leaves steaming pellets
in the air in front of me
this november morning.
Amongst sleet and worries of hunters,
nose bursting with red and running,
mouth madly laughing-- feet slipping on
last defiant sprigs of green and tripping
on the desolate stalks of once-tall corn.

The Joy Stone

I just remembered it this morning--the stone that sits copious miles to the east in my Vermont drawer. It is a mere pebble really, rather plainly dressed in its smooth robe of creamy white and yellow, and likely the gift of some river before it was the gift of a family friend on my tenth Christmas. In fact, if someone were to throw my stone out into the dirt road by our house on one of these rainy autumn days, and if it were to land upside down, only the grater coming by next spring might turn it over and cause one to stoop and wonder at the word "joy" lying in the mud.

Joy is unique in that way, coming in odd combinations and ungainly carriages. Yesterday it was pawprints in the sand and the flambuoyant fiery gold of unleaving trees, twelve years ago it was dashing barefoot about the yard in the first snow, and a few weeks past it was the homely box turtles and lizard in Tennessee. Turned upsidedown, none of these would be too elaborate either--except perhaps the underbelly of the turtle--and yet they are joy all the same.

I do not think that the gift of my inscripted pocket stone was accidental, although like many things at that age, I somehow missed the significance. I guess I am joy, beyond simply being captured often by it, but even right-side up, we humans aren't too much to look at either. We're awkward. We have dirty shoes. Our hearts continually connive evilities.

Paul writes: "I thank my God in all my remembrance of you, always offering prayer with joy in my every prayer for you all, in view of your participation in the gospel from the first day until now. For I am confident of this very thing, that he who began a good work in you will perfect it until the day of Christ Jesus" (Phil. 1:3-6). If we find joy in things down in our neck of the woods, and if upright and purified minds praying for us find a greater Joy in our learning that true Joy is found in a higher JOY, how much more must the greatest JOY of all experienced by our Lord as he looks down with JOY upon his children who have asked Him to right them and pick them up out of the dirt?

Do bear that around with you. It will grow joyously warm-enough-to-sprout in your pocket, even as you begin to grow and burst resplendent out of His.