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Thanksgiving
The birds were thankful today, crowding around the ones in the front and back of the house. Among the doves on the ground were some juncos, which we rarely see here. The day was clear and crisp, and I was glad I had filled the bird bath, because several of the little ones took baths, including a female goldfinch. Odd for this time of year. While filling the feeders in the hummingbird & butterfly garden, I noticed a tuft of Bonnie’s hair caught in the grass between two of the fence staves. Stave The First. Thanksgiving day means its time to pull down a beloved volume of Dickens and step…
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Glimpse Impression
The car moved towards me in the parking lot this morning when I arrived. It was still dark, and the lights on their tall poles threw their long cone-beams down onto the damp asphalt. I heard it before I saw it, a rough, laboring engine in an older vehicle. I stopped to let it pass before crossing the lot. The light fell on the car and showed me the driver. Single mom, I thought. She was young, with still-wet hair plastered down on her head, her face full of the kind of worried concentration that comes from paying bills with credit cards, accepting donations from food pantries and smug relatives,…
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Lances In Darkness
Because we didn’t own a car when I was a boy, I was always thrilled to ride in one. The speed of modern transport has never lost its magic for me, and this perpetual appreciation stems from remembering how it feels to walk to or from home when hot and tired while watching cars purr past with their air conditioning and comfortable bench seats. I used to play a mental game anytime I rode in a car. I would imagine I had a long, long sword, sharper than the stropped razor’s in R.V.’s barber shop, longer than a vaulter’s pole, extending out the passenger side window. And as we would…
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The Map Of Scars
I dreamed of my daddy last night, which was unusual. I rarely dream of him, probably because I didn’t really know him at all, having only seen him less than forty times in my life. In the dream, I couldn’t see Daddy’s face clearly. This has been a lifelong pattern for me. So often, I will look someone full in the face in one of my dreams but the face will be blurred or occluded in some way. I can see the person from the periphery of my vision, but a direct gaze will immediately blur the center of my dream-vision. It is like mercury, forever running and shifting away…
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Hourglass
Summer is on us in full force. Driving to work this morning, the haze in the air gave a taste of drowsiness, of lassitude. The mountains to the south of us are famously known as the Great Smoky Mountains, but the Clinch Mountains in which I live and move and have my daily being are smoky enough under their own rippling power. I passed a group of cows with their calves and noticed one little heifer with a white face, placid beneath a locust tree. She looked as if she’d forgotten to remove her cold cream when she tumbled out of bed at first light. I believe our eyes met…
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The Art Of Saturday
The sunrise looked as if it had been painted by Bob Ross. First, a deep crimson line was stroked across the horizon, behind the trees. By the time I had started the coffee, the unflappable old painter had taken a wide, dry brush and blended in some yellow and turned the eastern canvas into a benign lampshade glow. Ol’ Bob used to astound me with the rapidity with which he wielded a brush or knife to produce startling effects. And so it is with sunrise and sunset and clouds — by the time one fetches a camera with which to record the moment, the entire scene can shift. Each microsecond…
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Faith In Exile, Part I
I’ve never until this moment written the following words down, and I’ve only spoken them aloud to my wife. I consider myself a Catholic. I was raised in a non-religious home, although my mother taught us to believe in the God of the Bible, and in His son, Jesus. She allowed us to attend church with friends if we wished, and she prayed with me at my bedside when I was a little fellow. The doctrines — if they can be called doctrines — that I was taught were standard but elusive. The Ten Commandments, and the Sinner’s Prayer, and Jesus waits to be invited into our hearts. But even…