Night, On the Feast of Saint Patrick of Ireland

First thing I did when I rolled out of bed this morning was to confront Mrs. Orr and see if she was wearing green. Foiled again.

I usually do some sort of Saint Patrick’s Day post, but after reading Laura Wood’s collection of recent Hibernian posts, I decided it would be better just to link to what she’s written. First, a thoughtful and reverent entry about a prayer some say was written by the old saint himself. Next up, a grim and needful post about the state of Ireland today.  And then finally, two items to leave a lighter feel in the heart, here and here.

This day has been co-opted, like the rainbow, by every degenerate pervert old enough to mince down the street. ‘Tis a pity, because so many of us can trace our spiritual lineage back to the efforts of the tough Scotsman who was once a slave and who returned to the place of his bondage to preach the gospel of light and liberty to the once-proud Irish race. But I will still say “Happy Saint Patrick’s Day” to you all. And I’ll still pinch the living snot out of anyone I see who isn’t wearin’ the green. It’s one of the precious few acts of sanctioned violence I can get away with in this day and age.

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The photo above was taken on my morning walk before beginning my work shift in my home office. My cow-owning neighbor, he of the squinty, calcified personality, has plowed up the acres that abut our southern property line in order to grow his silage corn for the season. He’s been rotating his corn for the past few years and now it’s time to bring it down from the high western ridge to here. The smell of the freshly turned earth was indescribable, and the sight of so many birds hunting worms among the black clods was beautiful to me. I stood at the fence and imagined how this field will look in August, with row after row of tasseled food for the cows, and I thought of the platoons of coons that will try to raid it, and of the way the full moon will look through those long, broad leaves, and of the life shooting up into the individual ears and kernels, and of the sojourn of man upon the earth that must be turned over and harrowed and disked again and again until a harvest worth using comes forth. And I thought of butter and salt, and of many other things that cause a man’s heart to lift just a bit.

***

I discovered evidence of mice in our pantry the other night, and I set out several traps. The ones I use are very good and usually snap down on a larcenous little critter soon after I bait and set them. But for two nights, a little fellow outsmarted me and took the bait but left the traps unsprung. Y’all know I am overly kindly towards the small creatures, but when one of them bites into my soft Hawaiian rolls or chews into a loaf of good bread, Mr. Nice Guy goes out the door in search of his more ruthless friend. Since I couldn’t catch him with the array of traps I have, and since Harlan the barn cat isn’t here to help me any longer, I had to go to Plan B, which is something I’d hoped to avoid.

Glue traps.

Yes, yes, I know. I hate them, too. But I couldn’t just let a mouse or mice run amok among the foodstuffs. So I put some glue traps down. And this morning, Mrs. Orr exclaimed, “Oh! Oh! There’s a mouse in here!” I hurried in and saw him, stuck helplessly to the merciless black surface of the thing. He was terrified and trembling, and I knew what I had to do. I picked up the trap and winced as I saw him trying to rip his own legs away from the inky substance in which he was stuck. I carried him outside and up into the woods, talking to him as I went. And do you know what I was thinking of? I was thinking of what I posted the other day, the French scientist who was the subject of the isolation experiment in a Texas cave in the Seventies, and how he tried out of loneliness to capture the little mouse who was sharing his cave, and how devastated he was when he accidentally killed the little thing. I was thinking of this as I reached a pile of large rocks near Bonnie’s grave. I set the trap down and then knelt and stroked the mouse’s back. He jumped at first, but then settled down and let me run my finger along his back, feeling the sleek, soft fur and his tiny vital-ness, his life, his existence, his mouse-ness. I told him I would pray for him, that he would awaken in a moment in Mouse Heaven with a warm sun over his head and a field of grain before him. And then I did pray out loud. And then I did what I had to do.

And none of this necessary stuff ever gets easier. I am weaker than I have liked to think over the years.

***

A side item…here is a very interesting article, three years old, about a now-closed university program. I wonder if the young men who were once in the program realize now how blessed they were? If I’d have encountered something like this, my flirtation with higher education might have turned out differently.

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These are the last few days of winter, and on Sunday, the winter of AD 2020 will be gone forever, and the spring will be here, and Eastertide will be closer, and our revolving course through the universe will be one twist farther along.

On my walk this morning, I snapped the picture below. It’s a clutch of thorns on the stump of a locust tree which was leaning against the wire fence. Look closely at the upper left quadrant. Do you see the little thorns that look like crosses? For years I have collected these little crosses and have glued some of them to framed pieces of burlap coffee sacks and given them as gifts. Do you see the tiny points at the end of the cruciform elements? When you look at them, do you think of what it would feel like to have a wreath of these things forced down onto your head? Suffering and prayer…these are the mediums in which we work.

A happy Saint Patrick’s Day to you all, my dear readers. Springtime is hurrying up over the ridge. Look there…do you sense it coming?

~ S.K. Orr