Another poetry challenge from Fake Flamenco! And another poetry form I’ve never tried: a flamenca. And y’all, this was most definitely challenging, but also really fun. I always love a chance to flex my writing muscles in a new way. So, enjoy! And if you want to participate, too, the deadline to post is Sunday, December 12th.
************
The old year turns to new
with a promise of light.
The darkest of days
reminds a weary earth
there’s peace in the night sky.
In last night’s pajamas,
throw together:
Ambition, with a dash
of anxiety.
Just a sprinkle of
focus,
and a pinch
of “I got this!”
Add a cup of coffee.
(Make that two, actually…)
Shake and mix well.
Serve with a side
of “Oh, hell,
I forgot about that…”
The Monday Special:
Order up!
The last of the year,
the shortest of days,
a high bright moon
in a new winter haze –
December descends,
the darkest of months,
in stoic shades
of white and gray.
But there’s beauty
in the spartan landscape
and comfort in the cold air:
a peaceful silence,
a slant of light,
a joy in rest
and in the hope of
fresh fallen snow,
a gift in the season of giving
and a spirit in knowing
the season is fleeting.
All things must
come to an end,
and in ending can
begin again.
Inside the house, heat radiated from the oven in the kitchen. The old cast iron woodstove in the basement burned warm and steady. Outside, a thick layer of fresh, white snow had started to blanket the brown grass and the empty trees. It didn’t often snow in the holler before December, but this year, flakes fell wet and heavy onto the newly cold earth. The gray, bright light of a winter morning peeked through the windows, and from his perch at the kitchen table, still in his pajamas, a little boy sat cradling a half-eaten bowl of grits in his hands.
“You go on along and brush your teeth as soon as you’re done,” said his mother. “I know you forgot last night.”
“I did not,” the boy answered.
“Oh, yes you did, James Henry Cumbow. Your teeth’ll fall out if you’re not careful.”
James Henry shuddered. He liked his teeth right where they were, thank you very much, even if he did sometimes forget to clean them. He watched his mother brush a raw turkey with melted butter, and then sprinkle on salt and pepper. His mouth watered.
“After you brush your teeth and comb your hair, you can walk on down the holler and watch.”
“I did so brush my teeth last night,” he insisted. And added, “I can really go watch this year?”
“I reckon you’re big enough,” his mother said.
He jumped off his chair and ran for the bathroom. He’d never brushed his teeth faster. From the kitchen, he heard his mother yell, “And wear your old gloves! I’m not buying more if you get your new ones dirty.”
James Henry dressed in a layer of long underwear, and then faded blue jeans and a red plaid flannel shirt. From the top of his closet, which he could just reach, he grabbed an old wool hat and last year’s gloves. He made his way back out to the kitchen, and hurdled toward the front door.
“Remember, now,” his mother said, “by the time y’all are done, dinner’ll be ready and on the table. Don’t be late. Tell your daddy, too, when you get down there.”
“I will, Mother,” he said, and grinned at her as he opened the door and stepped out into the cold.
James Henry had seen eleven Thanksgivings, this being the eleventh. Every year, before anyone else woke up, he’d watched his father walk down the holler and join his uncles and older cousins and all the neighbor boys in a tradition he’d at first found frightening, but now thought of as fascinating and necessary. Slaughtering the hog would feed all of them for months.
“And well, too,” his mother would say.
“It’s messy work,” his father warned him, every year. “And it’s hard.”
“You’re not old enough to help yet,” his mother told him. “And anyway, it’ll scare you.”
He was scared, a little, as he made his way through the falling snow down toward the barn and the smokehouse.
He was scared, and his hands trembled in their threadbare gloves. But he was excited, too, and he could feel the electric zing of it all the way down to his fingertips. This year, he’d join the ranks of his elders, and he wouldn’t be just a kid anymore.
He spotted his father first, standing outside of the hog’s pen with his Uncle Virgil and with Larry, an older boy from up the hill. Beside them, there were metal buckets full of steaming water, and a table with knives and gloves.
“Hiya, James Henry,” Larry said.
James Henry elbowed his way into the circle to his father’s side, and said back, “Hey, Larry.”
“Isn’t he a little young to be down here?”
Larry hadn’t addressed that to James Henry, but to his father, who looked down and said, “Your mama let you come down here?”
“Yes, sir,” James Henry answered.
“She tell you you’re ready?”
“Yes, sir,” James Henry answered again.
“Then you can stay,” his father said.
“Yes, sir,” James Henry said, and smiled big and wide at Larry, who’d started to look down at the ground.
“Well, that’s your choice, Porter,” his Uncle Virgil said to his father, “but I wouldn’t let my boy down here quite yet.”
James Henry crossed his arms and glared right at Virgil. “I’m old enough,” he said. “And quit talking about me like I ain’t here.”
Virgil just laughed.
James Henry didn’t much care. Let him laugh at me, he thought. I’m still here. And then he felt a hand on his shoulder, and looked up to see his father smiling down at him.
“You’re old enough,” Porter said, “and you can stay down here as long as you want to.”
With that, Porter walked toward the barn, and James Henry followed him.
“Daddy,” he asked, “how old were you your first time?”
“I reckon I was about nine,” Porter replied. “Maybe younger. Times was different back then. Little ones had to grow up fast.”
“How about Mother?”
“Your mama didn’t grow up in the holler,” Porter said.
“Where’d she grow up?”
“Philadelphia,” Porter said, “and then she moved down here for me, after the war.”
“What did she do before then?”
“You’ll have to ask her,” Porter answered, “because I ain’t got time to answer all your questions just now.”
James Henry was quiet.
“You ain’t done anything wrong, James Henry,” Porter added. “We just have to get to work if we want to be done by dinner.”
“Oh,” James Henry said. “I see. Can I help?”
“You’re just watching this year. But you can stand right over there while I get things ready.”
James Henry nodded, and wandered over into a dark corner of the barn. He watched for a while, as his father gathered up some extra knives and a couple of saws, but Porter always worked in silence.
“Daddy?”
“Yeah?” Porter answered, but didn’t turn around.
“Can I go outside for a while? It’s not started yet, right? I won’t miss anything?”
“As long as you’re at the pig pen in about ten minutes, you won’t miss nothing.”
James Henry said, “I won’t go too far,” and then jogged out of the barn and towards the smokehouse. He took a moment to stop and scratch one of the barn cats on the head, and then kept on moving, over to the hog’s pen. Larry and Virgil weren’t there anymore, and so he got to take a good, long look at the hog.
He’d seen hogs before. They were fat and muddy, and didn’t move much, from what he could tell. But this hog – this one was special, because it was chosen for the slaughter, and it would feed everyone, and he’d never gotten to see one of those up close on the day before.
“I bet you’re scared,” he told the hog. “Or maybe you don’t know what’s coming.”
The hog sat in silence.
“I’m not scared,” he said. “I’m big enough to not be scared.”
Silence from the hog.
“I reckon you are, too,” James Henry added.
He reached out a hand to pat the hog’s head, but stopped when he heard footsteps behind him.
“It ain’t a pet, James Henry,” Larry said. “Stop fussing over it.”
Behind Larry were Porter and Uncle Virgil, along with a few other men and older boys. Robert, who helped with the stalls, and Tilson, who was only two grades above James Henry. And his Uncle June, too, carrying a rifle.
James Henry shivered. He knew what came next.
Porter walked up behind him and said, “You don’t have to watch if you don’t want to.”
James Henry stood right where he was, and kept his eyes open.
“Suit yourself,” Porter said.
When the shot came, it was quick.
Porter put a hand on James Henry’s head, rubbed at the top of his wool hat and said, “Why don’t you go on back to the house now?”
James Henry watched what was going on around him. The snow fell, and the wind picked up. The men moved fast, methodical. James Henry thought they looked a lot like the bands he saw sometimes on TV, like each man had his own part and his own instrument. It looked a lot like work. Like when mama cut up a chicken for dinner, or when daddy brought home a buck to clean.
James Henry stayed, and his father didn’t try to change his mind. He stayed and he watched, and once the job was mostly done, he walked back up the holler.
When he opened the door, his mother greeted him, told him to go change and wash his face and hands. The house smelled like meat and gravy, and the woodstove still burned away down in the basement. He stood in the doorway, staring out into the room.
“You doing okay?” His mother stooped down and put a hand to his chin. She turned his face right and left, and wiped a smudge of dirt off his cheek.
“I thought…” he started, but didn’t know quite what to say next.
“What did you think?” His mother moved back to the stove, stirred at a pot of green beans.
“I thought I’d feel different,” James Henry said, once he finally found the right words.
“Oh, honey,” his mother said, “it’s just what we have to do to live. It ain’t all that special.”
“Then why’d you make me wait so long?”
“Because,” she said, and sighed, “part of being old enough and big enough and grown enough is understanding exactly what I just told you.”
“It was messy,” he said. “And it smelled bad.”
“I remember the smell my first time, too,” his mother told him. “And I got sick. I didn’t grow up on a farm like you and your daddy.”
“How old were you?”
“Twenty-two, and you were in my belly.”
“You got sick?”
“I did. And I didn’t eat bacon again for two years. You like bacon, right?”
James Henry nodded, and then walked into the bathroom. He washed his face and hands, and changed into clean clothes. When he came back in the kitchen, his father was home, and his mother was setting the table.
And when they sat down to dinner together a little later, James Henry got to say grace.
************
Thank you for reading! This is the eleventh of twelve stories I’ll write as part of my 2021 Short Story Challenge. Twelve months, twelve stories, and the theme this year is: Home.
Here are the first ten stories, if you’d like to read them:
And if you want to join in the fun, here’s more information. I hope you do! But just reading is good, too, and I’m glad you’re here!
The last story of 2021 will be posted at the end of December.
I’d like to know
the language of the grove,
to understand the subtle
conversation of the trees.
To speak without words,
to give and to take
as they need,
to sustain and support
through heat waves and storms –
there’s a special kind of magic
in those ancient roots
and rustling leaves.
I wrote these for the November 2021 Poetry Challenge over at Fake Flamenco (which is a wonderful blog that you should definitely go visit and follow). I’ve never written a tanka before, or done a poetry challenge, for that matter, so I had some fun and wrote a few different poems. Enjoy! And if you want to participate, too, the deadline to post is Sunday, November 16th.
**********
The moon and the sun
They are sisters eternal
Each in her own place
They bring balance to the sky
And harmony to mankind
**********
I can hold it all
Stars and moon, the midnight sky
Wrapped close in my arms
The velvet dark and blue light
A cosmic lover kept safe
**********
Paint the stars with me
Dream the dreams and name the lights
Sing songs of elders
Deep in the dark sky’s belly
Awaken the living flame
And here we are again,
aren’t we?
A blasé Monday
spent checking things
off the list
(the interminable list).
It’s pretty mundane, sure
(but made better by sunshine
and maybe some good wine
at dinner).
And the hits, well, yeah
they do keep coming,
but that’s not so bad
because life does keep going.
And, hey, as it stands,
at least I’m not bored.
What’s left
when the leaves
have fallen
and the grass
has gone fallow?
Once the air’s grown cold
and the night sky’s shifted,
once the frost has
come and covered
the hills and meadows,
what’s left to us
in this new
season of darkness?
To rest, to sleep,
to build a hearth fire,
to watch it snow.
To breathe deep and
release a sigh out
among the coming
winter winds.
These belong to us,
are made for us and
left to us by the maiden
and the mother and the crone.
Just as it begins
when new things grow
in a world made bright,
the old year ends
quiet and star light,
with a gentle
and a loving
letting go.
We’ll never know who did it. Who cast the spell and brought the fog. It rolled in as we slept, before the dawn, gray and viscous, a blanket of cool and damp. It slithered over the grass and in the trees, and curled itself into every little nook, cranny, and corner.
Life was quiet on the Mountain. That’s why we came. That’s why we built our homes and planted our gardens and settled here. High above the rest of the world, away from the noise and the hurry, we could live in peace, with no one but birds and bears and deer to judge us, and nothing but trees and stars and each other for company. This we wanted – this easy, quiet, slow turning of the days, this peaceful time together, this chance to build something better than we’d had before. We were all grateful for this place and this peace, and most of all for Mary, who’d made it all possible.
Mary had money, more money than she needed, she said. But more than that, she had love. Love to give to all of us, more than we’d ever had. She embraced us, guided us, and made for us a home in the sky.
“Come to the Mountain with me,” she’d pleaded, “come and live there together and we’ll show the world that it never should have given up on us.”
And we’d come. How quickly we’d packed our bags – only one for each of us – and said goodbye.
“We’ll build something they could never even imagine, and we’ll do it together,” Mary had said. “I deserve happiness. You deserve it, we all deserve it, and we’ll create it there, together. Come with me.”
And then she’d hugged each of us, touched her white, slender hand to each of our hearts, alabaster against the grime of a world gone wrong inside us, and she’d kissed our cheeks with her cool, red lips. And to every one of us, she’d said, “I am yours, and you are mine, and we belong to each other. Do you love me?”
And we’d answered, all of us, barely above a whisper, “I love you, Mary.”
“I love you, too,” she’d said.
And just like that, Mary became Mother, and all of us Brothers and Sisters, her Children. She’d protect us, feed us, clothe us, love us. We truly did belong to each other, and not even an army couldn’t break us apart.
In the beginning, in those earliest days on the Mountain, we prayed and we worked and we sang. And we ate together at every meal, stretched out on threadbare blankets across the high Green Valley meadow, or squeezed into the Peoples’ Hall if the weather was cold or wet. We ate the food we grew, and Mary, always somewhere in the middle of all of us, reminded us to be grateful, and to show appreciation.
“We work together as one, and what feeds one feeds all. We live for each other, and to each other we give life.”
And on Thursday evenings, tucked together into the chapel at the Pinnacle, the top of our little village, Mary told us stories and asked us to share our own. And when those stories were sad, or angry, then we’d join hands and lift our voices to cast out that dangerous energy.
“Make no mistake, my Children,” Mary would tell us, “there is evil in this world, and those who think it and speak it, they manifest it. They cast it, they give it form.”
And here, she would pause, breathe deep, and we could feel her fear and worry. And then she would smile, gentle and wide.
“But we are new,” she’d say, “and we are safe here together. We are new every day, every moment, that we choose to live in love and not in fear.”
Mary spoke often of the Darkness. Her greatest agony, she said, was knowing that it was always close by, in all of our hearts, and our greatest task was keeping it at bay.
“We all harbor Darkness,” she’d warn us. “Even within myself, I feel it. But we must never let it take control of us, and we must never give in to it. My mother always told me, and I tell you now, that one bad apple spoils the bunch. What’s done by one is done by all, but we can work together to harbor the Light. We must always love and trust each other. And my Children, sometimes trust must be earned, and love must be cruel.”
We all knew what she meant. We all knew the Punishments for evil thoughts and dark impulses. Mary decided each case, and we knew she felt the pain of each judgment. A day spent facing the wall, or an evening without supper – these were for mild discretions, like laziness or a harsh tongue. A beating administered by the Offended, that was the cost of spreading lies. But for something truly evil, it was a night in the Cellar, in the cold, dark ground with the worms and snakes, and with no light, food, or water. And if the offense was bad enough, a night could become a week, or more.
Mary would cry as she led us there to witness a Punishment. And she would tell us, as she embraced the Offender, “You are Punished now because you are loved. May you learn this lesson, Child, and may your return to the Light be your reward.”
Always, one of us was missing. But we knew the stakes. We knew that any hatred or sinfulness within one of us could spell the end for all.
Some days, Mary would leave us, and spend time on her own.
“I need my Silence,” she’d say, “so I can hear what can’t be heard. I will bring it to you, and share it with you. My mind is your mind.”
She kept her room in the back of the Pinnacle, and we knew never to intrude upon that space. And so on the days when she rested and listened, we worked as normal, often harder, so she could see. We sewed and mended, we scrubbed, we cooked, we chopped wood for our fires and gathered flowers or leaves for our hearths, and we waited. And when she came back to us, she always noticed.
“My Children, I am proud.”
The greatest compliment.
Our lives were simple. And our love for each other was deep and unshakeable, and we lived for a long time in that comforting, warm certainty. And then, one day, we noticed a change in Mary.
It started at supper, on a cool autumn evening. As Mary led us through our Evening Prayer, her voice trembled.
“My Children,” she began, “my heart is heavy today, and my bones are tired. I feel a change coming, and I fear it will be difficult for us.”
She paused, and we waited, each of us holding our breath and clenching our fists.
“I ask that you trust me, as I trust you,” she continued. “I do not know what our future holds, but I will guide you, and I will show you the path, as I always have.”
She touched one hand to her chest, and raised her mug of tea in the other. “Our Family,” she said.
“Our Family,” we repeated.
In the days that followed, Mary spent more time alone, and when she did join us, her gaze was distant, her blue eyes clouded, and she spoke barely a word. She didn’t join us in preparing our meals, or in our daily chores. And when she did speak, her voice was flat and empty.
“The time is coming,” she would say. “A change is coming. It is one we all need.”
And then, one morning, Mary didn’t come to the Peoples’ Hall for breakfast. She didn’t come the next morning, or the one after that, and we started to worry.
And on the morning of the fourth day, we found a note, and beside the note, a bottle of amber liquid, both placed in the center of the main dining table.
My children, the note read, in Mary’s delicate, spiraling script, the day is today. All Mothers must let their children fly, and today, you must spread your wings. It is the pain all Mothers must endure. I have taught you what I know, and you have made my life full and beautiful. We have belonged to each other, and we will belong to each other always. But today, I must allow you to grow beyond me, and you must allow yourselves to take these next steps into the Light. I must leave you, but my heart will remain on the Mountain, because it is there within each of you.
And here, she’d written instructions. Terrible instructions.
I will meet you on the Path, my Children, though I will walk it with you no longer. Trust that when the time is right, we will be together again.
There was some argument about what to do next. Some of us, the weak and the frightened, couldn’t bear to follow Mary’s guidance, and they left and made their way down the mountain. But most of us, we stayed. And we gathered cups from the kitchen, and we poured for each other from the bottle and drank deeply. And we fell asleep, just as Mary said we would, and when we awoke, there was the fog.
Now we are here alone. And the fog will not relent, and we will never know who brought it to us – doubtless one of the few who left us spoke it into being and made it real. The Light is hard to see, but we will not give up.
And Mary will come to us, we know, when the time is right, just as she said. Perhaps she’ll emerge from the tree line in the Green Valley, or she’ll make her way down from the Pinnacle, weaving through the dark trees in her bright white dress.
But we know she’ll come. Our Mother would never abandon us. In this, we have decided, she is trying to teach us. Patience, maybe, or trust. We trust her. And so we will wait here, for as long as we must. We will wait for her, in this fog, on this mountain, our home.
*************
Thank you for reading! This is the tenth of twelve stories I’ll write as part of my 2021 Short Story Challenge. Twelve months, twelve stories, and the theme this year is: Home.
Here are the first nine stories, if you’d like to read them:
And if you want to join in the fun, here’s more information. I hope you do! But just reading is good, too, and I’m glad you’re here!
The next story will be posted at the end of November.
…will be posted on Halloween. Sunday isn’t a normal posting day for me, I know, but here’s the thing – the weather today is dark and cloudy, rainy and windy, and pretty much perfect for writing a creepy story. So, I’m taking advantage, and time, and really sinking into this one. I can’t wait to see what it looks like once it’s done.
In the meantime, as a preview, here are the first couple of paragraphs:
We’ll never know who did it. Who cast the spell and brought the fog. It rolled in before dawn, gray and viscous, a blanket of cool and damp. It slithered over the grass and in the trees, and curled itself into every little nook, cranny, and corner.
Life was quiet on the mountain. That’s why we came. That’s why we built our homes and planted our gardens and settled here. High above the rest of the world, away from the noise and the hurry, we could live in peace, with no one but birds and bears and deer to judge us, and nothing but trees and stars and each other for company. This we wanted – this easy, quiet, slow turning of the days, this peaceful time together, this chance to build something better than we’d had before. We were all grateful for this place…
Are you intrigued? I hope so! And I hope you’ll pop by on Sunday and give it a read.
A Virginia Writer's Diary 