Country Evening
rural countryside
full moon rising, stars falling
Great Horned Owls conspire
November 7 – Country Evening
Red-Shouldered Hawks
Last week, I heard them before I saw them – which is rarely the case. Usually, they’re perched up on a tree limb or on a wire watching for the slightest rustling in the underbrush below, looking for living snacks. Not last week, though. The house was quiet, when out of nowhere the familiar cries came nearer. Soon, they seemed right overhead – and sure enough, I stepped out onto the front porch, glanced up, and saw them.
I feared for our families of rabbits and our raccoon (which may actually be one of a pair with little ones) that has just checked in to live among the wild critters at the Johnson Funny Farm. We have a revolving door for all kinds of furry and feathered and scaly and armored friends, from armadillos to foxes to possums to raccoons, to rabbits, field mice, bobcats, fox-squirrels, chipmunks, owls, herds and herds of all-day-deer, rogue donkeys and wayward cattle (even bulls, yes), escaped horses, dogs, snakes, skunks, coyotes, birds of all kinds, and feral cats. We have even had wild boar come through years ago, and a mysterious creature that my parents swear was a Florida panther back in 2010, even though I still question that. We believe we have had a bear, too, on the wilder side of the farm where hunters once took the back gate down and began dumping deer heads and wild hog carcasses like it was a regular landfill back there before we reinstalled a heavier gate and an old non-working camera with a No Trespassing sign.
Seeing hawks, though, as often as it happens, is always a bittersweet sight. I love the majestic presence, but even as I near the age of 60, I am still skittish about the brutal cruelty of nature. And so much of it goes on right here in the woods.
Just like the regular world we live in, where most of us feel more like rabbits right about now.
Red-Shouldered Hawk pair
circles overhead, seeking
unsuspecting prey
Next Steps Nonet
today we take the next steps toward
building our barndominium
it’s all part of the process
in our retirement plan ~
simplify, downsize,
anticipate
ease in days
ahead
now
Day 30 of #VerseLove with Dr. Sarah Donovan of Oklahoma on a Slice of Life
Today we wrap up #VerseLove 2024 at http://www.ethicalela.com with a prompt from Dr. Sarah Donovan, inviting us to choose a favorite prompt from the month and write another poem on that same prompt. I chose Stacey Joy’s In Our Mama’s Kitchens and Fran Haley’s The First Time. A very special thanks to Sarah Donovan and to Two Writing Teachers for giving us a space to write and grow and encourage each other. I look back as a preacher’s kid growing up in a household where one truly never knew which way the ball was coming, and today’s poem takes me back to the first time I knew I needed to hold on tight.
Pastorium Perils
late summer 1971
in rural Reynolds, Georgia
the land of peach trees
in their time of ripeness
Mama was pregnant with
my baby brother and
we were in the den
Mama Daddy and me
when
~~whoosh~~
in through the kitchen door
a naked girl with
long wet hair
streaked through
our house holding a towel
screaming all the way
down the hall
to my parents’ bedroom
locking the door
on her heels her stepdad
pounding and screaming
threatening her life
I recognized them from church
I was five
the girl was a teenager
(with flapping boobs
……and hair….down there?)
her stepdad was drunk
my mother clutched me
carried me like a football
into my room
locked the door
then ran through
the connecting bathroom
I followed, fearful
to stay alone
crawled under their bed
Mama found the girl
huddled in the bottom
of their closet
shaking
crying uncontrollably
wailing for help
Mama comforted her
clothed her
sat on the bed
holding her
called the cops
we listened
in fear for Dad
as we waited
those slurred screams
of fury
are seared
into my memory forever
she comes with me
or I’ll go get
my ruiner
and ruin you
then more voices,
the crash of a lamp
furniture slamming
handcuffs, arrest,
police report
one prominent
family in ruins
exposed
it was the first time
I knew
growing up a preacher’s
kid would bring
a whole cast of
characters always calling
mostly clothed
it was the first time
I saw a naked teenager
running for her life
Country Living – Stafford Challenge Day 20
driveway gravel crackles under tires
resident deer appears in mists
hawks hunt meadows for field mice
playful will-o'-the-wisps
gather 'round at night
you can see them ~
ancestors
long gone ~
here
Savoring Saturday
I’ve been looking forward to this weekend for several reasons.
- I’m cooking dinner for a friend who is now cancer-free after radiation, chemotherapy, and surgery, and I’ll get to see her today for the first time since early June.
- I’ll finally finish a quilt for my new granddaughter and get to see the true “rag quilt” look of the final product.
- I’ll get to read from the next book in Sarah Donovan’s book club, even though the hammock is out of the question on what is supposed to be the hottest weekend of the summer here.
- The weeds that are completely out of control will get handled by someone else.
- There’ll be some time for birding before it gets hot outside, when the birds are most active.
- There’ll be some time for writing chapters in two books I’m working on with my writing group.
- Some pressure washing might happen.
And the other thing that might happen is a trip to an underground bookstore where they sell these candles that use the scents of things in the books they’re named after, like Alice in Wonderland with the unbirthday cake fragrance, and Anne of Green Gables with some lemon and jasmine. A co-worker told me about this place, maybe an hour from here, where she started Christmas shopping last weekend because of all the unique gifts she’d found when her husband took her there as part of her birthday celebration.
For now, I’m settled into my writing chair, enjoying the early morning silence of the house. I’ve taken the boys out for their morning relief romp, and they all came back in and settled back to sleep right away. I can hear a Carolina Wren singing at the top of its lungs through the kitchen window, and the faintest light looks like pinholes through the tree leaves against the eastern side of the Johnson Funny Farm.
Five minutes from now, at a quarter to seven, I’ll be outdoors with a steaming cup of coffee, starting a bird count to mark the species I hear and see.
And I won’t be rushed to get showered and dressed today. I’ll savor my coffee and my own private bird concert on the front porch way out here in our remote corner under the Loblolly pines of rural Georgia and give a thousand thanks for the blessings of another sunrise to enjoy the spectacular splendor of the woods.
Savoring Saturdays
Saturdays in 2023 are still savory. We begin the day with coffee and a bite to eat somewhere before spending the day together. We are blessed that our jobs allow us to have some common weekend time to get out and enjoy life, and we don’t take that for granted!
Smitty’s in Woodbury, Georgia was our choice on Saturday. Our friend Bob Oxford owns this restaurant, and his brother Mike helps out on weekends. Their mother, “Miss Jewel” Oxford, was the oldest living member of Concord Baptist Church, where we attended years ago. Her fried pies were delicious, and Bob still makes those pies from time to time, taught by the best! When I served on a pastor search committee with Bob, he’d bring those pies to the meetings, and they went lickety-split!
I enjoy rereading some of my rural life go-to books occasionally as we wait on our breakfast to arrive. Yesterday’s choice was Stillmeadow and Sugarbridge by Gladys Taber and Barbara Webster. Their exchange of letters from the 1950s between their homes in Pennsylvania and Connecticut describes country living at its finest. I like to feel part of that, particularly when my biscuit is made from scratch that very morning, and with each bite I think of the simple joys of rural life not afforded in big cities.
We also made a rare discovery: Georgia peaches! Most of Georgia’s peach crop was lost this year, so coming by Georgia peaches has been close to impossible – – until yesterday! We stopped at a produce stand in Woodbury and found them. I bought two large baskets to slice and eat with our yogurt this coming week. It’s breakfast today, before tuning in to You Tube to hear Dad preach at St. Simons Island First Baptist Church. Our son and his family, home waiting on Baby #5 to make her appearance, will be watching, too!
Our time yesterday was spent driving and birdwatching. My husband is a former deputy in the county where we live, and as a current elected official, he also enjoys time to get out and ride the roads to check conditions and washouts on the dirt roads. We both love this quiet time for different reasons, but it works all the same. He reminisces about the experiences he’s had here throughout his life, and I watch and listen for birds.
Way back in the day, Flat Shoals was filled with hundreds of people on weekends (“mostly drunk,” my husband added, thinking back on the times he had to respond to calls out in this area). It was a popular place to bring a cooler and an inner tube or raft and find a spot in the rock shallows on the shoals to stay cool all weekend. Today, you might see a few fishermen angling to stock their freezers for the next fish fry.
We were there for the birds.
I logged seven new species in the county yesterday along the waterways here at Flat Shoals. Through birdwatching and long Saturday drives followed by coffee together in the morning, I find that I get through the stress of the work week better when I know I have the weekends just around the next corner.
While others are packing our local air-conditioned movie theater to see Barbie, we have a front-row seat to the birds!
Common Threads 