Sunday Morning, 1957

Sunday Morning, 1957. Michael, Jeff, and Bruce

Whenever I’m in my Jeep and on the road, my soundtrack is playing, even if there is no sound at all. All driving has a soundtrack; I know nothing about plugs or points, but I know about the soundtracks. I might be driving to the beach, or to the school, or simply running out to the market for milk. It’s playing; I can hear it, and if I cut my eyes quick enough, I even see the opening credits projected on the lane beside me. The soundtrack changes with my mood, and the music started before I could drive; long before.

The Wilderness Baptist Church

11 o’clock. Any spring or summer Sunday morning, 1957.

The long hour of Sunday school was over, and Pastor Bell was about to launch into an hour of fiery brimstone, or eternity in the sky; it was always one or the other. On certain Sundays, there would be communion, and the ushers passed around tiny shots of Welch’s Grape Juice and cubes of Wonder Bread to those saved sinners in the congregation; blood and body of Christ, with a taste of jelly bread. I was baptized the year before, when I was six, for I had found the love of God in my second cousin, and wished to be baptized alongside her, in case there was chronological seating in Heaven. Normally, I would take communion, but that spring and summer, this sinner had other plans.

As often as possible, but not enough to arouse suspicion, I would complain of a tummy ache caused by the ritual Sunday school Tootsie Roll Pop. My father was an usher, so he was busy ushing, and my mother was motherly, so she would let me go outside to the car to rest on the backseat until the service was over.

I would hold my bible with one hand, and my tummy with the other, walking achingly slow out to that 1950 baby blue Ford, and as the tall double doors to the church slowly closed for the sermon, I slid in behind the huge steering wheel and turned on the radio. My father always parked under the old oaks, facing west, which was perfect, because that's where I was headed, straight out Route 3 to the Blue Ridge Mountains. Behind me was the cemetery; the tombstones a row upon row of stop signs. Stop playing, stop singing, stop that crazy rock and roll. In front of me were the mountains and the music. The car didn't have to move; the music moved me, and for an hour, the bible in the backseat, me in the front, left arm resting on the open window, right hand on the suicide knob; aloud and alone, I sang to the AM radio. The Everly Brothers’ Bye Bye Love.

So, I won’t be sitting next to my second cousin in heaven, but I've heard the music and I've been there before.

 ♫

Part of the Scintilla Project. Learn more at scintillaproject.com and on twitter @ScintillaHQ.

The Last Summer

Kids; The Last Summer (Michael & Bruce)

I was eleven when we moved to Lock’s Corner, halfway between Fredericksburg and Bowling Green, a few miles east of Guinea Station, where Stonewall Jackson died. The previous year, we left our Wilderness farm, where that same Stonewall lost his arm. It was Virginia in 1961 and the War Between the States still reckoned into every description of place. The Lost Cause scratching at the door for a hundred years.

My father had his own war inside, and was plotting another new strategy, another new start. He was the son of a blacksmith, and never found his place in this world. There were many new starts, new dreams, but this was one of his last, before the dreams were lost to drink. In Lock’s Corner, there were only six small homes, but, right on the corner, my father rented a house with an old general store on the first floor. He named it Community Grocery and painted it bright white with a red “Drink Coca-Cola” sign on the side, offering Pure Oil at the pump for twenty cents a gallon during the gas wars of ’61. He would sell everything, from penny candy to pickled eggs, and life would be a dream.  Every customer had good credit, even if they rarely paid their bill. Between the gas wars and the unpaid tabs, it was inevitable that the store, the dream, would fail, and we would move on to the next battlefield.

The time came, as it always did, that my father got into a fight with the other local drunks; this time he was outnumbered as they stomped him on the ground.  My mother grabbed the rifle to run the men off, but my father was beaten enough to stay bedridden for awhile. That summer, my twelve-year-old brother and I worked the store, while my mother took care of our father and two younger brothers upstairs. I can’t say that I was very good at being a shopkeeper; when I pumped gas, the driver would likely pull off, calling from his car, “Tell your father, I’ll pay for that later.” I would likely never see that driver again.

I rarely think about it anymore, that war before this war, and never called it a job, because there wasn't money to be paid.

 “I bet I can drink mine down in four seconds.”

My pay for the day was an orange Tru-Ade and a Hostess cupcake, and in four seconds, half of my pay was gone. Tru-Ade was a non-carbonated soda, so we could drink a whole bottle in no time. I should have savored that soda, they weren't an everyday deal, but I had to beat my brother in some silly sibling rivalry. For awhile, at day’s end, we would be kids; our father was upstairs, but we knew he wasn't coming down to stop our silliness. That was the last summer that we weren't blamed for his failures; that was the last summer that we could be kids.

The store, the war, continued for another year before he gave up and moved north to another dream, but the dreams became smaller, as the wars became larger, until his final surrender.

.

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There's a 2010 photograph of the store on Google maps and it still stands on street view: http://goo.gl/yk7hr

Part of the Scintilla Project. Learn more at scintillaproject.com and on twitter @ScintillaHQ.

Writing Poetry on Paper Clouds

Written Receipts for Paid Attention

January Crow by Michael Douglas Jones ©2019

My poet heart is writing on a pass of paper clouds moving left to write across the frozen northern fields; a crystal breath, billowing, filling the late afternoon with wonder and words that appear, and disappear, in moments of vivid crescent light and violescent shade.

Crows flock in as punctuation; a caw here, a comma there, returning to roost in the fine handwritten script of bare maple branches. Turkey vultures sail in too, crossing the T's of hickory trees, and underlining the rhyme in blueblack. From my cottage, to the south behind, a faint scent of bitternut smoke colors this poem in bittersweet.

And here I stand in the still, below the westwrit wind; my pencil in my pocket, my poet heart tucked up my sleeve. I raise my hand to write this down, to carry it in leatherbound, but the pencil pulls the poem apart, and all of this begins again.

My poet heart is writing on a fade of falling dark.

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12/12/12

Written Receipts for Paid Attention

Carolina Wren 12/12/12 by Michael Douglas Jones

    At 12:12:12pm on 12/12/12, I sat on the small wood wall behind my cottage, near the line of tall pines, beneath the winter roost of the Cooper’s Hawk. A wisp of whitest clouds carried the sound of distant dogs, and the laughter of school children on the recess playground across the valley. The sun, to the south, settled low on this short December day, but warmed my cheek, like wool wrapped around me. Beneath the redbud, on the split-rail post, a Carolina Wren rattled a warning about the Cooper’s Hawk above. I breathed in the crisp cooling air that warms our ancient hearts, and knew that this was indeed an extraordinary moment, never to be repeated. A moment not unlike this moment; or this moment. Or this.

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All the Day

#Reverb12

All the Day

a composite photograph by Michael Douglas Jones

All the day, at every hour, the travelers wish, and worry; each with equal effect. Here, near the seven mile marker on a hundred mile rail, built on bridges above the rivers, I work one task at a time to quiet my mind, and watch the wonder of this world, all the day, at every hour.

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#reverb12 Day 3: What do you really wish for?

Winter Rest

Reverb12

Waiting by Michael Douglas Jones

Patient,

stands the empty vase in winter,

waiting for the summer blossom.

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I am spent; you will not see me in my winter rest, thirty steps down the bank, off the burnt hill road, beyond the long line of scrub pines, where the split-rail remnants trail off; there I am, blending back into the breath of soft soil. My last companion is a wake of vultures, the black angels of carrion come. I am the ribcage in the cornfield.

I know I had more to give, but I would not walk with you, held back by my doubts, not in you, but in me. On every road, I turned off before reaching the ridge. This day, my will is too weak to return to the road, so I rest here until spring.

Try as I might, when I return, I won’t remember this; the days will grow longer; I will walk these roads with you again, and one day, we will reach the ridge.

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Posted in response to Reverb12 

Perhaps Tonight

#Reverb12

 How are you starting this last month of 2012?

That Last Day
composite photograph

 Death’s ice hand, scratching at my door front, cracking, tapping, like sleet, on my window glass; that reaper with the raspy whisper, that skeptic with a swindler’s smile, sending missives, and missionaries, to bring me over, to pull me under, to turn me into soil and water. Until dawn, I hear the tapping, of imagination, or memory, hammering my heart in the pitch of winter night. This year of disappointment and death waits for me until the dawn of the last day of this final year. I start this month not knowing.

 Wrapped in oakwood smoke and overwhelm, I rise, in ache, slowly from my pinewood cot; I rise in awe that I am still here as light arrives. I wish for little else.

 December sun is late to rise; just moments into dawning, the turkey vulture takes to his day, seeking the warmer sunlight that reaches the tallest dead oak in view, passing eight hand spans above my head, with wet wings sounding like distant dogs on the ridge. Giving me a knowing nod as he lifts higher, up and away; he waits to clean my bones, but I am not yet ready. Oh, Pensée; they have such patience; perhaps tonight, but not today.

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