Winter Changes

Posted on December 10, 2012 by Doc Arnett

We had wondered how long
December’s remarkably mild beginning
could last.

We know now:
eight days,
eleven hours,
give or take.

Leaving church just before noon
on the ninth day,
we felt the wind coming from the north,
the beginning of a hard change
that would be below freezing by mid-afternoon.

In late afternoon, we moved the horses
into the small lot by the shed,
the only place where they would have
some shelter from the wind.

Then, we walked back toward the house,
into the sending cut,
to finish moving the outdoor pots
into a place
where they might make it through the winter
without splintering from the freeze.

It would have been easier
in last week’s warmth,
but would have lacked the urgency
of a single-digit wind chill
and the long, lean edge
of a slate gray cloud bank
blanking out the setting sun beyond the hills.

H. Arnett
12/10/12

Posted in Christian Devotions, Christian Living, Farming, Gardening, Metaphysical Reflection, Nature, Poetry, Spiritual Contemplation | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Winter Changes

Morning Hay

Posted on December 7, 2012 by Doc Arnett

In the darkness of a clouded dawn,
I push the cart across the lawn,
feeling the shake and shudder
of each lump and bump in the rough grass,
pass the garage and the horse trailer,
cross the low ridge of the old terrace,
then stop beside the shed
where the hay bales are stacked.

I unlatch the wider doors to the shed,
find by feeling the strings in the thatch
and break open a new bale of alfalfa.

If there is a dessert hay,
or opiate for horses,
this is it.
I take only a couple of flakes
for each horse,
add a whole bale of brome.

The plastic wheels of the cart
rumble and rattle loudly
across the gravel driveway.
On the side of the short slope
next to the fence,
I divide the hay
and make two piles
forty feet apart
so that neither the mare nor the gelding
can guard both at once.

Sharing is an art
selectively practiced
in the equestrian world,
and the human as well,
even when there’s more than enough
to go around.

H. Arnett
12/7/12

Posted in Christian Devotions, Christian Living, Farming, Metaphysical Reflection, Nature, Poetry, Spiritual Contemplation | Tagged , , , , , | 1 Comment

The Upside of Drought

Posted on December 6, 2012 by Doc Arnett

December 1, 1970, was a warm day in southern Kentucky. Typically, the high temperature for that time of year would have been in the thirties, maybe low forties. During a warm spell, it might hit fifty. Still cool enough for a jacket, for sure. That year, though, the temperature was in the upper sixties. I remember thinking that morning, “Man, this is the first day of December and I’m doing the milking in my tee shirt.” Of course, I wasn’t literally doing the milking in my tee shirt; I was wearing a tee shirt and doing the milking. I was also wearing jeans, socks and shoes. But enough of this tedium on behalf of the overly literally minded. On to the topic of the weather.

Ours has been lovely so far for December. Eerily lovely.

While our lows at night have dipped below freezing for several of the first five days, the daytime highs are tripping the fifties, even the sixties. And this is a couple hundred miles north of southern Kentucky. We had a few flurries of snow a week or two ago but all this sunshine and warmth is a bit bizarre for northeastern Kansas.

November, here, is supposed to be a long month of dismal days, gray and drizzly. Our average monthly rainfall is close to three inches. We had less than a tenth this year as we near our third consecutive year of significantly below normal precipitation. Yet, we are much better off than the rest of Kansas and a good bit of the nation.

But, being the resolute plains dwellers that we are, we steel ourselves as best we can and brace for yet another day of gorgeous weather. November was an ideal October, with lots of pleasant sunny days with low humidity. Bike riding weather, horse riding weather, long walks in the hills weather, perfect nights for football weather. Deceptively delightful weather.

It is a tricky thing in this world: praying for rain and longing for days and nights of slow drizzle while admiring and enjoying the bounty of our blessings. It is an odd and ironic thing to appreciate the low heating bills and the miles of pleasant driving while remembering that every gorgeous week prolongs the drought, brings us closer to greater severity.

What will be also odd, ironic and challenging will be to appreciate the cold snows that spell some relief. Indeed, the Lord moves in mysterious ways his wonders to perform. One of his greatest is teaching us to rely upon him in all things, in all ways.

Even on the most beautiful days.

H. Arnett
12/6/12

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First Light

Posted on December 5, 2012 by Doc Arnett

A few long streaks, mostly pink,
stretch south to north,
low in the eastern sky,
brightening as they near the horizon.
The backdrop fades into the palest blue
just where the earth
closes the view of the heavens.

As I walk along the dark ground,
the mare comes to feed at the black tub.
I rub my hand along the winter wool
of her spine.
She is wearing a crown of sorts,
a frosted fringe just below
where tail joins body,
hairs the length of my finger
crusted white,
almost glowing in this low light.

She drops her head to the trough
and I walk away,
rocking an empty bucket,
each of us to the next of our day,
blessed already by its beginning.

H. Arnett
12/5/12

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A Good Example

Posted on November 30, 2012 by Doc Arnett

“Any of you kids want to go with me to the Recycling Center?”

While I didn’t expect the response to rival that of an invitation to Worlds of Fun or a new PlayStation, I thought there was a chance one of the four grandkids might show a tweak of interest in riding along with me to Saint Joseph on the Saturday after Thanksgiving. They barely looked up from their iPhone video games.

Ah, well, a man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do when the back of his Silverado is filled with plastic and paper, cardboard and cans, so I headed to the door. As I was pulling on my jacket, Gage, the twelve-year-old, showed up with “I’ll go with you.” Cool.

After dropping off the recycling load, we headed to Wal-Mart for the supply stop. After picking up a bouquet of reasonably fresh-cut flowers for Randa, I asked Gage, “What would you like to get?”

I figured that any tweener who would give up the company of the couch, the iPhone and his cousins to accompany his grandfather on a boring errand trip deserved a little reward. I also figured that he’d wander about the aisles a while, finally choosing some inane thing that would leave me feeling just a tad more distant from this emerging generation.

Instead, Gage immediately said, “I’d want to get something I could share with the others.” Pleased and amused, I responded with “What sort of something might that be?” He thought for a moment and then grinned.

We headed to the candy section. A minute later, he’d picked out a bag of Twizzlers. “I know they like these.”

This little deal had just turned into a fine little event. Maybe I shouldn’t have been even slightly surprised by Gage’s response. Maybe it said more about how little I knew about my grandson. Regardless of that, such instantaneous, unpretentious unselfishness genuinely struck and impressed me.

I’m thinking that maybe, when I grow up, I want to be more like Gage.

H. Arnett
11/30/12

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Errands Run Amok

Posted on November 28, 2012 by Doc Arnett

It seemed like a really simple plan, nothing spectacular, routine to the point of being mundane: go by the ATM and deposit a couple of checks, drop off a box of stuff at the thrift store, unload five containers of properly sorted recyclables at the recycling center and then head over to Menard’s to get a new faucet. Nothing remarkable, nothing even worth writing about. Provided it was the mundane errand trip we expected on the day after Thanksgiving.

The ATM at the South Belt branch of Nodaway Valley Bank was the beginning point. I inserted and quickly removed my debit card, punched in all the numbers, went through the requisite steps and waited for the machine to issue my deposit envelope, which I planned to fill, seal and re-insert. I waited, then waited some more. I checked some scores in the newspaper, calculated annual gas mileage on the truck and waited. Randa and I finished a couple of games of badminton and then waited some more. Finally, just before I cleared her out in an impromptu game of Monopoly, a message appeared on the ATM screen confirming what I had already suspected for quite some time: “This machine ain’t working” or words to that effect, at least.

Not a big deal; we weren’t scraping the bottom of our checking account just yet. So we drove on over to the recycling center, which is always open Wednesday-Saturday, 7:30 a.m.-7:00 p.m., except for holidays. And, on November 23, 2012, the day after the holiday. The big shiny steel gate that is always open, Wednesday-Saturday, 7:30 a.m.-7:00 p.m., was closed. Rats!

Ah, well, the thrift store was nearby so I executed a slow rolling turnaround and headed out of the parking lot. I pulled up the narrow alley behind the thrift store, negotiating the Silverado around the over-sized dumpsters and the donated merchandise tossed around by quasi-generous people in a genuine hurry. I stopped, got out of the cab and reached into the back of the truck to lift out the box of stuff. And realized, rather embarrassedly, that I’d forgotten to put the big box of stuff into the back of the truck. It was still sitting on the pile of landscape blocks beside the garage. Drat!

Thus far, between electronic malfunctions, relying on assumption instead of verification, and my own mental ineptness, the trip had been a total bust. But, at Menards, amidst the mass of Black Friday shoppers, we found a faucet in exactly the finish, color and style that we wanted, for less than one-fourth the regular price. I just had to have three of them!

Isn’t it cool how much better a day can seem when we deliberately focus on our blessings instead of our disappointments?

H. Arnett
11/28/12

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Some Mighty Fine Leftovers

Posted on November 27, 2012 by Doc Arnett

I am standing at the edge
of my neighbors’ field,
looking west at the colored ending
of the last Lord’s Day in November,
eating the last piece of apple pie.

A few clouds
and two jet vapor trails
gleam silver
above the deep burn
of a sun that cannot be seen.

Black branches on the ridge
stretch slender silhouettes
against the sky.

I chew slowly,
crunching the apples,
savoring the sweet filling.

The silver turns pink
and the last fire sinks
below the hills.
I finish the final bit of crust,
lick the last bit of light
from this good day.

H. Arnett
11/27/12

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Faith, Hope and Love

Posted on November 20, 2012 by Doc Arnett

These old walls have withstood
a century of shaking and settling,
the rattles of wind and earth.
Lines mark the vertical of studs
and the horizontal of laths
where the occasional fracture
was more than the plaster could stand,
the cracking creases showing
where the rigid of powdered lime and sand
gave way to the testing.

A few days of tape and filler
and a few hours of sanding
have brought a look of new
to the old,
the stories of storms
hidden beneath the surface.

We will see whether mesh and mud
can fill and hold,
can keep the surface free
from showing the strain of life lived
in a place such as this.

Though marked and marred,
lined and pocked,
these old walls have endured
a century of shaking and settling
and still hold hard
to the shape they were given.

There are things not intended
to bend to the winds of this world.

H. Arnett
11/20/12

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Peaceful Risings

Posted on November 19, 2012 by Doc Arnett

Some mornings,
our rising comes early
and we wake to gentle dawn,
our hearts as at rest
as silent silhouettes of elm and locust
against the softest tinge of coming sun.

Others,
we rise in the rousing of troubled thoughts,
worries that would not sleep,
rumpling the sheets of turnings
that cannot find a restful pose
nor let go of the least corner of concern.

When worries burn through
the lighter fabric,
we come to the core
of faith and trust,
finding whether or not
our conviction of care

runs deep enough to believe
that all things work together for good
or choose instead
the dread of the world:
that every shifting of shadows
portends a closer evil

instead of a simple drifting
of clouds that may diffuse the Light
but cannot conceal its source
nor its witness of love
for those who know
that every day

is the day that He has made.

H. Arnett
11/19/12

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Tilting the Kaleidoscope

Posted on November 16, 2012 by Doc Arnett

I think that in much of our lives, we often and only see others in a particular role that comes to define them in our minds: the traffic officer writing tickets, the business clerk preparing invoices, the judge pronouncing sentence, the maintenance worker scraping paint. Seeing these people in such narrow function, we may forget that they have lives beyond the windows through which they appear to us. They also raise children, tend gardens, visit aging parents, mourn deceased loved ones.

It may be that they engage in these other roles with the same demeanor; perhaps the traffic officer is also a legalistic church member, the business clerk a stern and demanding sibling, the judge an uncompromising neighbor and the custodian an obsessive parent. But my experience has been that those other roles often reveal a very different nature or at least very different applications of personality.

The traffic officer is a very dedicated family man, the business clerk a humorous and loving grandparent, the judge a tireless community activist, and the custodian an incredibly talented artist. They do not transform into other people away from work; they simply display other aspects of who they are.

It is not feasible that we gain deep personal knowledge of every other person with whom we come into contact, even if on a frequent basis. But it does seem quite reasonable that we avoid defining them based upon a very limited interaction. I believe that this, too, might be an example of judging others as we would be judged.

H. Arnett
11/16/12

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