Sunday Morning Abultions

sunshine pulled back the covers,
shoved me out the door,
and around the lake.

Carolina wrens chatted
Daffodils up and at em'
Yesterday's sleet hanging
by a glistening thread.

Gray-haired lady walking Scotties
whispered as I passed,
"oh, the sun!"

The universe said yes.

Prism

For a recent family gathering I created a quiz about our childhood household, including identification of hymns  from isolated phrases. They were puzzled by four words "in this glad hour" but when I sang the four accompanying notes, immediately from our group of nine came the harmonious tenor, bass, soprano, alto voices singing the entire hymn, "Come Thou Almighty King" - from memory, finding the words and melody like stepping over stones in a clear running brook, picking our way through the years.

 Beautiful.

Check the Box

Lately I have been immersing myself in British Masterpiece Theatre WWII series like Foyle's War and Island at War. I am mesmerized.

While too young to have absorbed any personal involvement I find it incomprehensible how this one man's racial venom could have been allowed to morph into cataclysmic world-wide tragedy.

I think today we have checks and balances.

But how deep is the moat?

Ham Off the Hook

My childhood attic was a place of mystery. Dark shadows under the eaves potentially hid mice. I dreaded hearing that quick scurry. But it also held trunks of treasures - Mother's wedding dress, books of jig-saw puzzles, Christmas decorations, pennants from trips, a rocker with a broken cane seat, rolls of old wallpaper, an old heavy tin camping set where all the utensils fit together in a snug lidded pot, and many other unexplored cartons.

But hanging from an east rafter was always a ham from the fall butchering, covered with fat and salt. From time to time, some adult person would go up and cut off a piece for our dinner. As I recall, Mother cooked it for hours with green beans and served it with mashed potates, a sweet/sour tomato cucumber salad and a sweet, creamy rice pudding that she simmered in her double boiler.

Heaven.

The anemic slice of ham slathered in plastic bearing the banner "Boars Head's Best" that I bought at Harris-Teeter yesterday should blush with shame.

January Morning

Pink tulips,
blue bottle,
white-paned window
framing
early snow.

my candle burns,
coffee steams,
the Post awaits.

Cocooned.

The world is full

Library patron - "I'm looking for the poem that begins - 'the world is full of a number of things'.."

Me - "I'm sure we should all be as happy as kings."

She stared.

I grinned. "Robert Louis Steveson, 'A Child's Garden of Verses." My mother quoted them to me all the time."

That small poem, like countless others, reside somewhere in my memory because my mother's mind was layered to the top shelf with verse. In her one-room schoolhouse they had few books. Thus, the blackboard's contents went from slate to composition books (in true Palmer script of course!) to mind. And there they stayed.

And as I was the fourth of five children, Mother had little time to read to me, but she accessed those shelves of memory and offered Longfellow, Whittier, Stevenson and all her school-day poets as she cooked and cleaned and ran the household.

I mourn the passing of memorization, because a mind is a wonderful thing to google.

More than that, I mourn her.

Catching Up

Nothing graces
a Saturday morn
like a long-line chat
with a long-time friend.

Too much time
elapses
with people you love
hovering on the edges
of silence.

You need a spoken
yes.