Week follows week, and I never seem to have time to write. Last week I was harassed by overdue taxes, and this week, $10,000 poorer, I look ahead to my younger daughter getting married, next Saturday.
My life will be in turmoil this coming week. I have not been advised much about the preparations, but there is a good reason, for I am something of an old grouch, and don’t see why people can’t just get married and be done with it. Yet I also know such sentiments are blasphemy to females who like to fuss, and I have no desire to be beheaded. So I’m merely keeping my head down, doing what I’m told, and counting the days until next Sunday.
The problem is that the preparations are complete chaos. I can see the potential for a hilarious debacle, but I won’t be allowed to laugh. For example, the groom’s parent’s are flying up from Brazil, don’t speak a word of English, and I don’t speak a word of Portuguese. His mother wants to cook elaborate dishes, and the oven in the kitchen is broken. You better not dare allow the corners of your mouth to twitch up. This situation is serious, I tell you, serious!
Beyond all the agony is a simple fact: A wedding is a beautiful thing. All our efforts to ruin it cannot hide that fact. In like manner, life creates all sorts of clouds of dust which can be used as an excuse for not-writing, but the poetry is always there.
In ancient Persia poets were pampered
And given palaces to ponder in,
But modern men are constantly hampered
When their mind’s in the mood for wandering.
Still, the mind cannot always be denied.
As widgets hurry down assembly lines
Mistakes occur, for eyes wander aside
To beauty in a blond, for the High Devine
Does not shun low places. No disgrace’s
In doggeral. Christ had his dusty feet
Washed by a whore’s tears, as fussy faces
Lifted noses and sniffed. That which is most sweet
Is not buried by life’s bustle and noise.
God’s everywhere, and so are His joys.
To keep a semblance of sanity during this crazy week I will post pictures of hikes I took the children of my Childcare on last summer. Those hikes tended to get crazy, but with twenty-twenty hindsight I can see the poetry, even if I didn’t see it at the time.
One hike was down an abandoned road called “Whirlpool Road”. In 1750 it led down to an elbow in the Soughegan River where the water swirled in a whirlpool. By the year 1800 the whirlpool was gone, as the river had been dammed for a textile mill downstream. By 1900 many mills had moved south to escape northern labor unions, (and be closer to southern cotton), and wool prices were crashing, so the farmland began to be abandoned. As the land began to grow over, the locals described the underbrush as “puckerbrush”. (Because it made your face pucker as you walked through it.) Then, as a century passed, trees grew tall, and Whirlpool Road passed through shaded glades. By 2000 the trees were worth harvesting, and the logs were dragged out by growling machines called “skidders”, which would have awed the farmers of old, who hauled logs with a team of two horses. Skidders also tended to knock down the stone walls the farmers had labored so hard to raise. Lastly, though trees were left behind to reseed the forest, the skidders drove too close to the roots of some, and the roots died on that side, and the trees were vulnerable to gales.
This brings us to last summer, when we were drawn down that road. I was drawn by history. The children sought a different attraction.
Less attractive were the ticks, which were especially abundant, due to the fact whitetail deer like such over-gown lands.
Then, of course, it rained. The youth made it quite clear they were not having much fun, but then we came to a fallen tree. I never know what will redeem a hike, and change me from a child-abuser to a hero.
Blueberries were forgotten. The children delighted in the tree for over an hour. All I needed to do was referee king-of-the-mountain fights, and keep them from breaking each others necks. (I like this sort of fallen tree for it lets me study the subsoil of old pastures, and also there is the slight chance of finding an ancient artifact.)
Eventually we moved on to the blueberries, and ran into our next adventure. But that’s another story and another sonnet.
(Photo credits; blueberry pictures; Marlowe Gauteau)
Sunrise's Swansong 