Evening

The cool breeze of evening found me. I had been looking all day for the feel-good moment. After waiting for, what seemed like a life time, it envelopes me like a cloak. It swishes over my skin in puffs while the color of day fades to dim.

This is why I come here, why I love this place. I can look out at the hills sallow with evening, their certainty keeping me grounded. The sky above me a window pane, allowing me to see there is another side - the place where God waits for me.

A White Tail buck adorning ten points on thick beams of horn grazing not four feet from me on the grass I planted, lets me know I am giving back to nature. It has become symbiotic, nature and me, encouraging one another. A moment worth waiting for.

Journey

To Journal is to journey – down paths of words
Roads of words,
Highways of words,
Rivers of words
That take you places you’ve never been –
In your mind,
In your heart,
In your soul
Maybe UP paths, roads, highways and rivers is a better description

UP – as a spring or well were rushing upward and out of a deep place,
And mixing together with joy and sadness
Like salt and pepper,
Sugar and spice,
Sweet and bitter
The rough with the smooth
But happier at the end of it all –

For a journey not traveled
Is a life not lived –
A journal not written
Are words without life

The screech of a Bluejay sounds off high on a branch of the native pecan tree at the edge of my backyard. Hearing this scratchy sound any other time, I would make an effort to have a looksee so I could admire his velvety plumage adorned in various shades of denim blue. But today his presence is a vector of harrasment grating against my frazzled, sun-fried nerves.

After 63 days of smoldering summer heat pushing mercury over the 100 degree mark, after scorching endless days of drought, I am perched here to witness a soft velvety veil of water trail down from a flannel gray sky. The clouds alone bring relief from the sun, a silent persistant annoyance tormenting Texans for days on end. The orchestra of soft rain falls with crescendo, much like a passage of music. It is an ointment for weary gals like me in need of a soothing, restorative, healing balm.

The unwelcome bird above me only serves to interrupt the flow of medicine to my soul, provided by the rain.

The avian song continues without change for what seems like an eternity, effectively getting my attention. I now realize the Jay is merely in need of relief, as I am, from the oppresive high temperatures. The drapery of droplets pour enough water to form a pool in the street.

I knew I would hear the crass shouting again and again as long as the rain continued to fall. The big screech of the Bluejay would sound off to the neighborhood the same big joy I felt at the sight of a small miracle that brought 2/10 of an inch of moisture to my yard, leaving enough for a thirsty bird.

Thanksgiving Day

Nothing is unique about my name – but its mine – and I am ubiquitously unique. I am my mother’s daughter, my father’s 1st born, Buela and Lovey to 5 pair of loving eyes and sugar lips, a wife who proudly tacks her husband’s name on the end of her own, who believes that all things are possible through Christ, who lives in her, who cries at the birth of a baby, at a wedding, over a song, or the death of a soldier.

I am thankful not only for my husband who eats my burnt pies, but for the world in which I live – the world of 2nd chances. There is power in 2nd chances. They have a voice by which your ‘callings’ rise forth like Lazarus from the dead.

A statistic on the chart of unemployed Americans, I choose not to loose hope. While America still lives and breathes, I will teach my children, solve the mysteries of life with my grandchildren, hold hands with my man on the porch swing, swim off the shores of Medina Lake, cut a rug in Texas dancehalls, buy Crisco Shortening and turn to the heart of my home to bake pies and write about all of it.

Inspired? A little. As I step and fetch around my kitchen, my rolling pin and heart are ablaze with a message. We are all given a 2nd chance but we don’t always recognize it or reach for it. When it comes, you must rally your spirit, awaken your soul where your dreams pitch, plunge, and wait for you to live them out.

If Texas women kill their own snakes, they ought to be able to open a pie factory in their own home, producing 50 pies in a few days time, from a one-butt kitchen.

So reach America! The folks on the Mayflower did. They heard the call, the still-small-voice of God that whispers perpetually to His children with the message of His love – they took that 2nd chance to live a free life in a new land and dauntlessly set sail across the vast Atlantic for Plymouth, Massachusetts.

The Back Roads

Heading down a super slab highway would be going nowhere much too fast. I don’t want to do that today. The roads I choose need to be what folks around here call back roads. Meandrous swaths of roadway carrying travelers like arteries to another place, moving slow and easy, afford time to get a view of the part of the world that gets missed otherwise, letting nature lend aid to contemplation.

Back roads are connected by telephone poles or fence posts, not by the stripes down the middle. The ones that are bumpy and hilly, twisty-tourney, paved with a sheep’s coat or spattered with gravel, wildflowers, fountain-like clumps of grass, spiked cactus and rocks. Some are straight and flat for eternity. These can shimmer in the smelting heat of the Texas sun like false promises of water in a desert and require using caution before moving forward. Texas has them all.

Rolling through her towns, the roads are dotted with her multitudes making a statement of ownership on the chunk they call home – as if to fulfill a need to be connected like a babe to her mother’s bosom.

On the back roads, there are gates strategically hung between miles of fence posts. A sojourner like me is easily entertained by these multiple displays along the way. Some gates adorn an entrance to a fella’s property like a shroud, embellished with all manner of fanciful detail, as if protecting a sacred place and telling all who pass by about the kind of Texan he is. Others are mere openings in a fence. I see them as closures to a passage so I remain watchful for the most appealing gate as I poke along, searching for the one with no exit. I imagine going through it when I die to explore the other side, like a child looks for treasures. But there is no time for exploring now on this part of the journey. So I keep driving.

Drive on not caring. Caring was run over by a freight train quite a few miles back on the super slab. On the back roads, I don’t have to be concerned with mile markers because they don’t have any. Besides, if I paid attention to them, hurt might rear its head and there is no room in my suitcase for pain. It is already plump full with burdens that found me at mile markers I have spent valuable years trying to forget. So I keep driving.

Maybe I should consider walking instead so that I could become more intimate with the road and the places it takes me. So I would notice the gnarly cracks on the surface that look like the spidery veins in my legs, each one bursting open from pressure sources on the surface. Bearing down with the burden of the traveler, they give way. The fractures are unsightly, but they hint that many secrets lay below. One must travel slow and deliberate, paying attention, in order to discover each nook and cranny with its unique message. So it is in life. Moving too fast is the same as not moving at all. Either way, something learned by experience would be missed, like not hearing a sacred reading during a church service the spirit could not be quickened.

So I drive on, and find that using the car would be a better idea than walking in case the urge to go home over takes me suddenly. Then I could get there much faster. And I prefer the shelter of the car which is seemingly a spec more secure from things I might find harmful or scary, like the Texas summer heat and humidity, a deluge of rain, the dark, or barking memories.

Passing a community center I see a sign posted in front telling of a meeting there that gives coping skills to those with hearing loss. I wonder if the same skills apply to those who don’t listen.

Maybe driving a back road could be considered a coping skill.

Celebrating Us

The shadow grows long
And I know it is time for
The meeting of earth and sky once more

Where song finds music, the poet words,
And the artist a canvas

For me it is a place I go
To meet my lover
We unite in this vision above us under the same sky
Whether together or miles span between us

We claim the right of passage
To the heart of hearts,
Called by its true name, which is love

Hearing that call,
Feelings and emotions echo from the pen
Like a spiritual tradition that exclaims truth to the deep heart

In the marrow is felt the pull of the soul
To this other human being until two become one
Body and mind spill over with intense aliveness

Whispers of great empty places hush
As trust and courage embrace
Love itself is the soul’s air

And I want to breathe this love for eternity

Died And Gone To Texas

There are two things we do in life, one of which is dying. And when I do, I hope I go to Texas.

Her bosom is large and strong enough to cradle me for eternity. Her dirt, sweet and soothing, will embalm my senses, capturing her persona forever. Her vital signs will pulse through time, giving flow to her energy like the blood circulating in my veins.

Breathing deeply her Summer breezes, they will become my lullaby. As a mother swaddles her child, the Fall colors of Texas will wrap around me like a patchwork quilt, before I pass to the Rock of Ages. Eventually I’ll be lying in state with the death of Winter, as if to preserve life like the seed dieing unto itself, only to rise again in the Spring. New life will call for growth once more, intoxicating me with the perfume of wildflowers. Fresh as the morning, she will offer a drink from dawn’s dew to quench my thirst. As I drink the potion, she will suspend me into perpetual bliss.

My spirit quickens, I hear the call. Neither Heaven nor Hell has any hold over me. Texas belongs to both. She’s where I began, and so will forever be. Amen.