Stories bred us.
Stories fell us.
Stories met us.
Stories gave us.
Stories change us.
Stories save us.
Pierced…
Hiatus comes from the Latin hio, which means a yawning or an opening.
A familiar-looking sister word is portal.
Think: a yawning grave.
Now that is an interesting portal.
Hiatus is also familiar to anatomical language, referring to an opening, especially in an organ.
e.g. the Hiatus aorticus is a hole in your diaphragm.
Your aorta goes through there.
All your life blood goes through a hole in the thing that gives you breath.
How about that.
Unimaginable…
Why are your ways so high?
While I am so low?
Why are your thoughts so still?
While all day long we are killed?
It’s quiet up there.
My side is empty,
But my hand is taken.
Forgiveness, can you imagine?
Here I am…
Are: the present form of to be.
-R
A tiny snail brain…
I was exceedingly irresponsible on Wednesday.
I thought I might be turning into a bum.
“…if I keep this up, I won’t have a place to lay my head.”
It’s okay though, I snapped out of it.
Here’s what happened…
Work was stacking up, a real tower of babbling and beeping and buzzing.
Typical Wednesday morning for important people who do important stuff.
Something called me outside for a minute before diving in.
Then I just laid on the lawn and counted clouds.
For hours.
Horrendous, I know. And it gets worse.
I let the baby eat a dandelion and climb on my head and play with a piece of green hose so now he probably thinks playing with snakes is totally fine.
And I did nothing, still.
The dog snored.
The sun shined.
The chimes chimed.
We watched a snail labor for two hours over the fresh cut grass.
He was doing about 12 inches per hour, top speed. Working very hard.
Then our Rock Island Red named Julia came along and ate him.
Snails only live a few weeks, you know.
Even where rusty-feathered chickens aren’t.
Still, something was super important to this silly snail.
Something other than drinking today’s bluest sky and occasionally watering the greenest grass with my eyes.
His imagined destination (probably not a chicken gullet) must have been important indeed, for him to be striving so certainly for most of his short snail life.
Thank God I have a big man brain and not a tiny snail brain.
Everyone knows you gotta have a sense of urgency to get anywhere in life.
Anyway, I’m back to work on my tower now so it’s all good.
It’s a very important tower and lots of people are counting on me I think.
—
“Hey, how do you know the snail was a ‘he’?”
Good question.
Mostly a guess.
When it comes to work, women seem to know better.
But you already knew that, didn’t you? =)
Who drives you?
Robert H. Cantley.
He is a great grandfather.
She drove north every young summer to visit him and the woman with him.
He’s like the dad she didn’t have because somebody ran a red light.
They shared homemade dinners and wine and would wind miles of stories at the stove every night.
They moved their lives over for that bright-eyed girl.
They believed in seeds and a harvest they wouldn’t live to see.
Sun up, top down he drove a 1953 Chevy Corvette, baby blue, shiny and cool.
He sold it with light in his heart when the heavy bubble burst.
He rolled right over the worst months in a 1994 pickup painted like raw milk.
He found the 4×4 far better for first-time-fishing in the mountains with great-grandkids and when they weren’t looking the lake shiny and cool would fill his eyes bouldered and blue and make him cry like a baby.
“He drives me crazy.” His wife will say.
He won’t argue with his lady. And he never says why.
He just makes music with his eyes.
“He loves like heaven does.”
He’s a stake driven in the ground his family goes around.
The bright-eyed girl gave his name, to her first boy.
They sent her boy to pick up his old fashioned Ford, last year.
Single cab stick shift saddle blankets on the seats.
Pneumonia hit him in the chest like a cement truck.
Death is one helluva red light.
So I sit in his seat and drive.
—
Did you know Randy Travis wrote a song about my great-grandfather?
Walking on moonbeams…
Why is he always telling stories?
Why doesn’t he just say what he means?
A full moon smile rose on the strange boy’s cheeks.
“Here’s a good one. Once, dad fired one of our orchard managers.”
“Okay. What happened?”
“Before he cleaned out his desk, the manager called a meeting with all the orchard people.”
“No, I mean why did he get fired?”
“And at this meeting he says “Alright everyone, I’m feeling generous today. Everyone who owes us anything, get our your bills, mark them down by half. I’ll sign off.” Just like that he cut all their debts in half, on his last day!”
“What!? He was already fired. He can’t do that, right?“
“He figured his little display of generosity might win him some new friends. It worked too. They loved him for it. He couch-surfed with some of them until he found steady work again.”
“Well, what did your dad do, wasn’t he mad?”
“Hah, no way! He almost rehired him.”
“But the guy cheated! He basically gave away your dad’s money!”
A laughing stream broke their path.
“Here, I know the way across. Watch where I put my feet.”
“You still didn’t tell me why he got fired.”
“Oh. I guess he got afraid. He got stingy with the orchard, anyhow.”
On the other side, the strange boy drew some numbers in the dust.
“How much is $1,000 worth? Or $10,000? Or $10 million?”
“How long does any wealth last?”
He looked up and the sun filled his eyes.
“How much is a friendship worth?”
“How long does a friendship last?”
Daylight was courting the horizon now.
The confident path sped their steps.
“Still, I don’t think your dad should let people just give away his stuff.”
“If you owned all the stars, how many would you give away?”
“Can you waste something that never runs out?”
Something in his chest sprung.
“It’s like I always say, little brother…
…the only way to lose your life is to try to save it.”
Moonbeams are quite soft underfoot, you know.
So they went on silently, for a while.
Holding the sun in your hand…
He was born under the shadow of a cactus.
He was born walking.
Independent from birth, like all desert creatures.
Desert life is perfect. Perfectly fair. You reap what you sow.
Cactus cultivation is primary business in the desert.
Drink cactus to feel quenched. Eat cactus to feel stuffed.
Life is full for desert people.
One day while walking and plucking thorns from his lips, he saw a strange boy perched on a fence post.
He had never seen a fence post in this spot before.
This boy was eating a strange fruit.
It looked like a sunset in his hand.
Pink and orange and yellow all at the same time.
Juice melted into his fingers, pooled in his palm and made tiny streams down his dusty arm.
“Is that…. an apple?”
He stepped closer.
Just saying the word made his mouth water and run dry.
An old traveler spoke of apples once.
All the cactus people said the old man was crazy.
“Yup! Want one?”
Reaching into his bag, the strange boy presented another pink fiery apple.
Streams of apple juice were dried on both of their arms when the sunlight began to swoon.
“Where do you get the apples?”
“From my dad.”
“What’s a ‘dad’?”
When the strange boy smiled it looked like the moon was in his mouth.
“Come with me. I’ll show ya.”
Rappahannock is fun to say…
The sun had been wrestling with the horizon for an hour.
Now gracefully rising, beams shot across the Rappahannock River.
The steady stream of light caught axe heads twirling through the air.
Each razor edge was glinting, hungry for the tree.
Cleaved at each bite and spit into the sky, snowy white wood chips blanketed the ground.
Orange, yellow and brown, leaves tumbled to rest, adding a fiery carpet.
It was 1781, the millstone of war had been grinding the land and her men for six years.
And now, burning for a moment, hope of victory and peace – Lord Cornwallis made a mistake.
The Continental Army was ready. The march began.
A bridge was needed and Corporal Edward Wallace and his men were charged with dropping the trees.
There were more trees than men, and the trees fell slowly.
Wallace, shouting and urging his men, surveyed the field from atop a large stump.
A rider galloped into the expanding clearing and hailed the officer.
Edward puzzled over the man’s uniform first, it was sharp but plain.
Then he noticed his face, gentle and full of weariness.
“You haven’t enough men for the job, have you?” the older man said.
“No sir. Reinforcements have been called, but no answer given.”
“Why don’t you lend a hand yourself?”
“Me? Why, I am a corporal…” he said, straightening his uniform.
“Ah, yes you are…” the rider was on the ground with a bounce, suddenly looking much younger.
Gripping an axe, the older man joined in razing the trees.
After the last stand was tumbled, the visitor returned the tool, wiped his hands and head, and mounted his animal.
“Corporal, the next time you have a job to put through and too few men to do it, you had better send for the Commander-in-Chief, and I will come again.”
He heeled his horse, and was gone.
Corporal Wallace was statued on his stump, staring to the woods where the hooves had disappeared.
Finally, containing his shock, he climbed down.
General Washington humbled a number of trees that day with an axe.
But he humbled a man when he humbled himself.