it’s true what God says:
joy comes in the morning when
darkness is at rest
heartaches blanketed
God’s loving mercy and grace
lift away the pain
Joy
A Saga in Six Days of Life When You Live on a Farm: Featuring Boo Radley and the Unexpected, Day 6
Day 6
our Boo Radley
did a most
surprising thing ~
our Boo
forced a threatening
brown bull to retreat
to turn tail
and
take to the woods
or was that his intention?
was he a charger of bulls
or was he a shepherd
of cows?
was he herding them
back in their farm direction
because he knew they
were lost, drifters one
farm south of theirs,
needing a nudge?
this is, after all
the Funny Farm,
where you have
to be a little
sideways to end
up here in the
land of the
unexpected
where wrinkles in
perceptions become
realities like this:
Boo Radley is a
shepherding schnoodle
of lost herds, the
meanest bulls not
excluded, because
he knows how it feels
to be lost, looking
for home, aggressively
persuading them not
to give up a good thing
all this brings back
the day we were
on the beach
late afternoon
on a cloudy day
sipping wine
on a blanket
when two women
much further into
their bottle
walked by us too close
to our beach campout
according to Boo
Boo corrected
them
~not politely~
and in their swagger,
in their smirks,
their chuckles,
one taunted back:
oh, what a little badass!
fast forward
the years
to today and I
want to go back
to that moment
and say
yes ma’am,
he certainly is!
he fulfilled the
prophesy at the bottom
of your
wine bottle
you saw the future
of our little rescue
Schnoodle named
Boo Radley~
a champion badass
herder of bulls
you weren’t bullshitting
A Saga in Six Days of Life When You Live on a Farm: Featuring Boo Radley and the Unexpected, Day 5
Day 5:
from the corner
of the house
I could see
the bull’s nostrils flare
I covered my eyes
and peeked through
two fingers
with one eye
our little rescue dog
the Schnoodle we
named Boo Radley
for his timid demeanor
the Schnauzer-Poodle mix
abandoned
in a duplex
by his former family
found by a landlord
matted and starving
thirsting to death
our Boo Radley
with more issues
than a decade of
Saturday Evening Posts
Boo, who trembles
when a cell phone dings
who drops his ears
when we pick him up
who has a nervous
breakdown when he
smells the heat
from the toaster
who sits and stares
down the driveway
when one of us
should be coming home
our Boo Radley
did a most
surprising thing
A Saga in Six Days of Life When You Live on a Farm: Featuring Boo Radley and the Unexpected, Day 4
Day 4:
the brown bull
dropped its head
ready to charge
I felt surely in my
soul I was about to
witness Boo Radley
being trampled
and killed
because
though he is small
he is tenacious
ten times the size
of that monstrous bull
in his inflated mind
what happened next
was a viral Tik Tok
never to be seen
except in my own memory reel
Boo Radley
charged the bull
zigzagging
cutting left to right
back and forth
front paws
low to the ground
cussing the bull
for all he was worth
edging up to the bull
its dropped head
meaning nothing to Boo
from the corner
of the house
I could see
its nostrils flare
I covered my eyes
and peeked through
two fingers
A Saga in Six Days of Life When You Live on a Farm: Featuring Boo Radley and the Unexpected, Day 3
Day 3:
In farming communities
not a week goes by
that some animal
doesn’t try to make
a break for it and
has to be herded
back to the home pasture
every new day brings
a Facebook Post –
pigs loose on Reidsboro Road
donkey running down Highway 362
goat with a red collar on Hollonville Drive
my favorite was the baby camel
someone reported
running down Concord Road
(the Sheriff’s Department went to
investigate and found it was
Nellie LaBerge’s Lllama)
you never know what you’ll
see in the country
but last week,
Wayne’s entire herd
of cows was loose
in the woods
between our farms
two bulls
among the herd
I was thinking
of lovely handbags
my husband was
thinking of
perfectly rounded cow
patties (dried cow poop)
(this isn’t out of the ordinary ~
just a few weeks ago we’d
had donkeys trying to
move onto the Johnson
Funny Farm
and my sister in law and
I joined in the chase
with other neighbors
to wrangle these two
asses and lead them
back home)
when Boo Radley
saw the herd of cows
eating his grass
the next day
he protected me
and our blades of grass
the black and white
bull turned tail and
ran into the woods
the milk and dark chocolate bull
stood its ground
Boo charged it
that’s when the brown bull
dropped its head
ready to charge
I felt surely in my
soul I was about to
witness Boo
being trampled
and killed
because
though he is small
he is tenacious
ten times the size
of that monstrous bull
in his inflated mind
A Saga in Six Days of Life When You Live on a Farm: Featuring Boo Radley and the Unexpected, Day 2
Day 2:
that one’ll make a lovely black and white
leather purse, I thought
of the bull grazing inches from my
bedroom window at midnight
on the Funny Farm
when our neighbor’s cows got loose
then I felt guilty
for thinking such a thought
next morning, my husband
called Wayne
turns out
another bull had gotten
into Wayne’s pasture
and their fighting
brought down the whole backside
of the fence bordering our farms
his entire herd was wandering
in the morning, cow poop
was everywhere
it’s just fertilizer
my husband reasoned
pointing to a
rounded one
the size of a dinner plate
that one’ll make a perfect
cow patty
Here are the two bulls ~ there were 8-10 cows in our front yard that night!
A Saga in Six Days of Life When You Live on a Farm: Featuring Boo Radley and the Unexpected, Day 1
Day 1:
around midnight
over the sound machine
something woke me
I heard it ~
the bumping
at first
I thought it was
in the attic
(a squirrel? raccoon?)
something bigger than
the occasional field mouse
so common on our farm
but then
it was at my
head, behind the wall
my husband
heard it too
sprang into action
flipped the switch
floodlights revealing
a herd of cows
grazing in the grass
inches from our windows
two bulls
one black and white
one milk and dark chocolate
matching my leather purse
from White Oak Pastures
in South Georgia
my husband gave me last Christmas
I’d heard closer than usual mooing
from Wayne and Janice’s field
right at the fence line
behind our barn
earlier in the day
It’s okay, I told him~
probably Wayne’s cows
we’ll call in the morning
right now it’s a win-win
they’re cutting the grass
their midnight snack
we settled back in
mended our broken sleep
Saturday Sunshine Voting Slapdown – The Stafford Challenge Day
An Election Day Reflection
Saturday Afternoon 2/25/2024 12:21
(a poem written during February’s preliminary for May’s Election Day)
I’m sitting in the car
waiting
again
a typical stop
while he talks and talks and talks
we only stopped to early vote ~no lines~
sun shines warm in this cold air
Rav4 my greenhouse, Caribbean blue
I clean out the car trash
notice a bush being windslapped
throwing up a limb
talk to the hand !
  as if suddenly offended
I can’t help wondering
if it’s because it is a political hedge
reacting to the lack of lines
and all the fresh gossip
of no one waiting
Decisions
we looked
you drove
I rode
we talked
we offered
they rejected
we walked
and just like that:
decisions are made
Untitled Art
untitled painting
strolling through the museum
white grape sour on glass
in left hand, merlot
in right, pinot grigio
blending portmanteaus
Common Threads 