Here we go again

The neighborhood is still asleep for most. I sit here with my iPhone, watching the morning news, wondering what word salad would come out if I just wrote without trying to edit the spelling. I see what happens when some people text me without trying to correct their spelling. You get to the point where you can't make any sense of the message. I do better on my desk top. Sooner or later I am going to have to go get ready for work. Oh well.

A long day, but longer for others

It starts off coming into the office very early so you can look over the file and make sure that you have it stuck clearly in your mind so that you don't look like an idiot in front of your client, who will definitely let you and everyone else they know that you are an idiot and remember that if you do well it was a miracle and if you don't then you are paid too much for what you do but you sit there in court from about 8:30 until 12:00, watching the show of other cases and other lawyers and other clients and you get the idea of where court is heading and you almost lean over to counsel for the other side and warn him about what might happen, but you don't so you come back after lunch, which you skipped by the way, but you did let the dog out, Cindy, but you didn't get to water, but you return to court and wait for your client to show and then they start dealing with other cases and you are watching and waiting then suddenly they call the calendar and you stand and opine as to how long it will take and the judge calls somebody else and then you are sitting watching and he asks if you could do it quicker, so you say yes, what else would you say, and you pick your stack of papers up and pile them on the desk and you motion for your client and she comes up and asks you where you want her and you point to the witness stand and she doesn't understand and you try again and you get her up there and swear her in and she starts to unravel and you try to push her forward until the judge starts asking questions and suddenly everyone is leaving and you are running back to the office to prepare an order and the day is done, at least that part of it and you have succeeded temporarily until the next day and the next court and the next client and judge.

And they are still trying cases up there, or were when you left.

The Tyger and the Lamb in Griffin, Georgia

I rode out on the Spring-time streets of Griffin-town
And the skies above me were an infant baby boy blue
And the grass was a tender, callow green,
Like the first sheepish poking of the first planting
Spring and the flowers offered their baby girl pinks
And bright butter-sunshine yellows, a pretty ribbon on the package

This is the day that the Lord has made

And yesterday, last week, last month when the cyclones blew
And the broad oak trees and maples tumbled down and were toppled
From the power of those winds, until the morning's sunshine's light
Showed the tragedies of loss and the chaos of chance
To so many of our brothers and sisters

Yet, this too is the day that the Lord has made.

And so the lamb who frolics to the tabor's piping in Springtime softness
And the tyger who watches from the darkened forests of the midnight blackness
Licking his lips in anticipation and hunger, are children of the same Creator.
So, Blake shall offer our catechism this pleasant morning:
The God of Moses, the God of Jonah as well.

I dreamed of Steven Hawking

I dreamed I met Steven Hawking at Bluegrass Airport in Lexington, Kentucky
And I maneuvered his infirm body into a rental car and drove him southwest
From Lexington toward the palisades along the Kentucky River
And on up the hill from Asbury to Pleasant Hill, an old Shaker community,
Where those early pilgrim souls, descendants of John Bunyan, Milton and Donne,
Sought their Utopia in the verdant hills of the Bluegrass of Olde Kentucky.
Parking our vehicle in the blacktopped parking lot, I pushed him up
To the collection of simple Shaker buildings, still and dignified
And ended his journey in a broad green space between the buildings
Where the grassy field was bounded by white-washed wooden fences
And the invisible breezes of April blew against our faces.
Squatting on my knees, down before his wheelchair,
I stared into his corrected eyes and asked him to stop
The meandering of his mind for a brief moment
And feel for the soft touch, the prompting of his heart
And search for the presence of God, the Creator of his mind
And body and the beauteous hills rolling out around us.
The mechanism of creation might just then lead him to the mechanic there.

FFV

I did some research on wikipedia tonight. I looked up First Families of Virginia. They had a list of family names. Interestingly, Baynham was on the list. So were Morris and Carr. Nice to be part of the group.I think that and a dollar or three, depending on where you go, will get you a cup of coffee. If you drink coffee. There was a news story about the noted, crippled theoretical physicist, Steven Hawking. After writing books about the origin of the universe. After writing about the scientific basis for the universe (based, of course, on "theoretical physics") he decided to explain that there was no scientific basis for God as the creator. The problem with this, as I see it, is that there doesn't have to be a scientific explanation for God. I always thought that the study of god was theology. Perhaps I will look to a theologian for information about God's nature and a physician for information about the physical world.

Moments Kept

There are some moments you never forget. I remember when we were visiting grandmommie and granddaddy at the farm and Frank fell into the hog wallow face first and walked up to the front door covered in that dark green-grey slop from head to toe. Grandaddy didn't recognize him. I remember walking across the fields to find cow carcasses lying at the edge of the woods. Taking home molars from the jawbone. Trolling across the hard-frozen pastures, looking for game. Quail, rabbits, whatever might flush as we breathed out the 'smoke' of late November. Following a rabbit starting away from us and watching as my dad turned and fired his 'sweet sixteen' and tearing that rabbit apart. Climbing up the wooden ladder into the loft above the stable and finding hen's eggs in crannies against the roof. Walking into the tobacco barn and smelling the remnants of the fired burley. Opening the smokehouse and smelling the hams and sausage long after they been taken down and consumed by the family. Eating bacon, lettuce and tomato sandwiches with homegrown tomatoes and my grandmother's own mayonnaise and a glass of iced tea in the summer. Warm, tart blackberry cobbler with vanilla ice cream.

Coldest Day

The snow blew in from the west
It was a grey, grey afternoon
In early December
In Northern Tennessee
An early blow
The thin funeral tent not much shelter
Thinking of Ms Jane and her thin, cotton coat
Not much comfort from the cold
We were all gathered
The whole of the congregation
Sitting on a hill above the Cumberland
And we paid the price of respect with our shivering
As the early whiteness fell:
The first snow of the season.