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These Tennessee Seasons
First Summer
Down-home is full in bloom; Honeysuckle ringlets tightly bind the barbed wire and locust posts, and all the broad leaves that line Gravely Road
are layered with red clay dust because this is the summer of apple orchards and poke suppers and a particular coolness down in the holler—beyond the glow of Lee School's windows.
Early Autumn
Pressure cooker sputters and rattles filling the little kitchen with roas'n-ear steam dripping down the walls as Mother sets a warm tea pitcher out on the table.
Johnny closes his recital piece and returns to his moon base. Screen door slams; voices arise fresh as smoldering leaves. Sondra heads
to the piano bench. Shirley and Diana are laughing too hard to breathe. Daddy drops the Times-News on the front porch and whistles his way into the living room where the girls are flipping pages of the Broadman Hymnal
and autumn dreams snap us to peak alertness and all spirits soar in three-part harmony as Daddy bequeathes the bass part:
Standing on the promises of Christ my King,
Thro' eternal ages let his praises ring; Glory in the highest, I will shout and sing, Standing on the promises of God. Standing,
Standing…
Mid-Winter
The slope up Mount Ida Place is layered with snow and the alley unfolds downhill smooth as finest silk where no children sleigh. Dropping the curtain she returns
to her work quietly, her brush rack upright on the table, wash water muddied gray in the jelly jar some time ago.
Across the richly textured vellum, each drying hue strives earnestly to belong among ten thousand
earlier arriving brush strokes:
Tall reeds embrace a country fence row laced with tiny pink and white blossoms; innocent hills are graced with birches, oaks, and elms emitting a yellow-green glow—
focal point, side-elevation, a country church stands resolute with no embellishment; its steeple rises stalwartly to the very core of brightness—a sky stretched too thin to conceal the sun's rays bursting through…
And now she is laying on a few silver clouds with wet washes and all a perfect harmony… at last the finishing touches
Spring
The lock springs open and he spreads
apart two crude, battered historic doors spilling light into the cavernous old store. Over his shoulders the Holston slices slowly out of its thawing muddy banks. A visitation of morning fog defines
in overlapping curves of green-blue Bays Mountain's heavy-molded shoulders. Benches inside are heaped with copper and bronze objects of every humble and extravagant purpose,
in sediments of lint and fine black grains of buffing wheels and polishing compound—the craftsman has returned to his workplace. He grabs the rigid, oily remnant pajama-top of twenty-five years ago, and a streak of gold
ushers the first glint of today's sun across a perfectly shiny Aladdin lamp. With smudged thumbs he rubs it gently as his eyes wrinkle.
Kingsport, Tennessee September 1985 on my parents' fiftieth anniversary
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