I walk out to stand on the back porch to feel a long-awaited difference. I feel the promise that was made in the beginning. I feel the sweet caress of Fall’s cooling. It may be a bit late this year but, I knew it would come eventually. It always does. I stand still to allow myself the beauty of what is all around me. The visual, the physical and the spiritual.
The visual is watching Black Cat stare down a little green frog that sits on the edge of the rain barrel supports. The lone hand of banana hanging in our clump. The neighbor’s calf stalking down some bug-gathering egrets. The pecan-stealing crows. The leaves from off of our maple tree floating to the ground. A spider struggling against the death tug of a much larger winged thing. All that is exactly as it is supposed to be.
The physical is almost too much to be explained. It is that wonderful feeling of being here on this porch of a house that sits exactly where large longleaf yellow pine trees once grew; where I preached funeral sermons over the graves of our little kittens, biddies and a favorite puppy…little "Boy." Our pet cemetery is here now under the foundation of our house. That moves my heart here in my old days.
The spiritual is hard to explain, but it is the sounds of the wind in those pine trees; those sounds that Grandma Minnie Smith told me to stand still and listen to, "Because it is the voices of the old ones." Grandma Minnie was as close to nature as one could get. I never can make out what the old ones are saying, but I know they speak. The spiritual is listening to those crows caw to alert their others of a good find of pecans, the cows lowing to their calves that have wandered away too far, the ping of falling acorns from my sawtooth oak across the way there. The buzzing of some unseen winged thing, the smell of cotton, the smell of peanuts. The smell of diesel fumes from the commercial haulers off there on I-65. Those smells aren't a natural part of all this, but they come from the natural part of all this. The sound of a tractor turning the earth or perhaps hay cutting.
My heightened senses give memories of chewing blue ribbon sugar cane as those delicious juices drip off my chin, land on my dress front and down my elbows, leaving cleaned trails in the arm dirt of my childhood play. The memory of excitement of running lickety-split to the persimmon tree there on the red clay bank, bent with fresh frost-nipped fruits all shriveled and waiting for us to gobble the sweet, pulpy insides while tongue-separating the seeds and skins as we gobbled in more.
I long for the taste of sweet potato pie, and Sunday afternoon chinquapin hunts with our neighborhood gang. I have a memory-taste of chewed up quince and stains from pomegranate. I cannot bring myself to move away to things waiting back inside to be organized, cleaned and washed.
Times like this bring peace and comfort. This is free for the taking and I understand it comes when the time is right. This time is right and I accept the gift that is being given from the One that is in control of all things.
The world is still turning on its axis.
I give thanks for this gift…
You can check out Earline’s blog and buy a copy of her first book “Life With the Top Down” at: http://www.earlinesdoins.com
