The "Stay at Home" Pictures

 

Our Pasture, PawPaw, Madison County, NC 04/20

These days
With time suspended
Not knowing one day from the next
Mind muddled from the effort of keeping track
Easily confused
Surrendering to the lethargy.
Why bother?

I mean, will we even be here in a year, six months?

Solace comes from our pasture and
The woods around it.
The daily changes in light and tone.
Bursts of green after a rain
Followed by heavy mists that give the Smokey Mountains their name.
Drought that drives even the grass to crackle.

The longer movements come season to season.
The deep shadows of fall that open to
The long visions of winter.
The smell of spring.
The breathlessness of summer.

Yet for all the change,
Both long and short,
There is the sense that
Nothing changes.
Maybe this is particular to the time in which we are living.
But what if it isn’t?
What if it will always be as it is now?
What if it always has been?

 

The "Stay at Home" Pictures

 

What Was Once the Bridge to Home, Paw Paw, 2020

 
 

The owners left a few years ago.
Moved to a manufactured home,
high on a hill nearby.
The house is much like the bridge,
falling in, rotting, the inside black with mold.

There’s history here.
A man shot, killed by his step-father.
I don’t know the details, but
the killed man, the stepson, was supposedly drunk,
high on drugs, shooting into the house,
from just beyond the bridge.
With his mother inside.
It was ruled justifiable.
Likely, I’d have done the same.

I pass this spot on my daily walks and
think about what must have been an awful night.
For everyone.
The terror of it.
A mother’s son, dead,
by the hands of her husband.
How does one live with that?

It’s peaceful there now in its disrepair.
Quiet, almost picturesque,
slowly becoming part of the landscape.
Part of the heritage of place.
There are beaver in the creek building their own home.
The creek rises and falls with the rain, sometimes
taking the beaver den downstream in high water.
They try to build back, but are washed out again.
And again.
Until finally moving to a more agreeable location.






 

The "Stay at Home" Pictures

Marshall, North Carolina, at its absolute finest. I’m proud.

 

Marshall, NC 06/06/20

 
 

Marshall, NC, 06/06/20

 

Eight minutes and forty-six seconds, Marshall, NC 06/06/20.

Eight minutes and forty-six seconds, Marshall, NC 06/06/20.

Black Lives Matter Rally surrounding memorial to Robert E. Lee, erected by the United Daughters of the Confederacy in 1926 ,Marshall, NC 06/06/20. It’s time for a change.