R.H. Snow's Blog, page 28

LORENA

Under a weakening winter sun, naked branches of the weeping willow cast their circle of woven shadows; beneath this sheltering canopy, a woman smoothed her skirt to sit and wait.

Pale hands swept wrinkles from the calico ruffles. The fabric was worn, its miniature floral pattern faded from red to a pale pink on white. Nonetheless, the cotton expanse was neatly kept, only slightly stained at the edges of the skirt, as was to be expected from walking down by the river. Shivering, she pulled her knitted shawl tighter. She opened her antique wicker basket and spread a dusty checkered cloth. It received an earthen jug of muscadine wine and a loaf of sourdough bread; from the jug she poured an offering in anticipation of meeting, singing in a low, soft voice:

The years creep slowly by, Lorena
The snow is on the grass again
The sun's low down the sky, Lorena
The frost gleams where the flowers have been

She heard his song answer:, far away and faint at first, a plaintive tenor, rising on the wind:

But my heart beats on as warmly now
As when the summer days were nigh
The sun can never dip so low
Or down affections cloudless sky

her heart skipped a beat as around the trunk of the ancient willow she saw his black hair, white rays of the lowering sun illuminating each waving lock. From the shadows, the rest of his face emerged; a straight grecian nose, impossibly blue eyes and boyish grin greeted her, framed by a neat black goatee.

She beamed: "Come to me, my love!"

Hiding behind the trunk, he almost seemed to be a part of the tree, but at last he stepped out, revealing slender frame swallowed up the blue wool of his jacket and brown woolen breeches of his uniform. Brushing the dust from his brass buttons, he attempted to make himself as presentable as war would allow him. Elegant despite the gunpowder stains and callouses, his long fingers clasped a sprig of bright yellow summer flowers, the stems arching gracefully in echo of his own form.

"You returned." He smiled again, surprised dimples forming in his rugged cheeks, genuine wonder at her appearance.

"How could I not? You are here! I will always come back for you, as long as you are here." She patted the checkered cloth and he sat down across from her, his flower in hand.

"A storm is coming, and a cold wind blows." Peering through the branches to the sky, he noted the cirrus clouds, white horsetails racing ahead of low gray billows. "You are indeed brave, my Lady to come here in the face of the maelstrom." He admired the deep purple of the muscadine wine: "But back home may be no better. Who knows what they would say, should your family find you've been in the presence of a Yankee Soldier?"

"They have never known, and they will never know!" Tears glimmered, the presence of memory. "I have hidden you here, just like I have hidden you in my heart."

He stretched his long legs before him, catlike. Leaning back on one elbow, the brass buttons of his Union jacket parted, revealing a yellowed homespun shirt beneath, and the dark curled hairs of his chest peeked through the open front. "Does it pain you? I wouldn't have you suffering in silence, alone and lonely. Nor would I want you to be punished for your love to me..." He reached out to gently touch the rim of the jar, and the wine within rippled.

Her heart fluttered; "No! They never knew. But even if they did, I would still come. I will always be here for you - "

He beamed again, and leaned back to lie upon the cloth. The light around him became golden, the hues warmer and brighter as the sun lowered beneath the high wispy clouds; "I don't know what I would have done, if you hadn't found me that day." Holding out his hand, the flower bobbed, its green leaves shining. The air around him shimmered. "I would have died alone, beneath this tree, never to know your touch, never to have seen your face -" He turned towards her, eyes alive with desire: "You bound my wounds and bound my heart, my fiery Southern Belle!"

Lying there in the lowering rays of evening, he became the man she met so long ago, wounded and bleeding, a Minie ball lodged in his lung. Blood now stained the white shirt, soaking the woollen coat, leaking into the soil below. His breaths became laboured, his skin pale, holding out a hand to her in supplication. She reached out to him in pity and love, but he seemed to recede into the shadow of the willow-

the light about him abruptly shifted. The man now healed, his coat and shirt cleansed of blood. His brass buttons gleamed in the evening sun, bright and golden as his smile - "you touched my cheek, and I felt my blood stir. You touched my heart, and even through a bullet pierced my flesh, all I could feel was the warmth of your hands, and the light in your eyes. The fever of my body was replaced with a fever of the soul, a heat that can't be cured by healing!"

He sighed, not from sorrow, but joy, yearning in the presence of pleasure promised:

"Ever since that day, I have waited for you here, bound by chains more precious than gold, the weight of sweetness more desirable than any freedom without you-" the blue eyes blazed:

"You hid me here, forever a prisoner of your Love!"

A wail welled up from the hollows, the river bottoms singing the song of the winter wind. "Oh Charles, Charles, it has been so long!" Shivering in the chill, she lifted her gaze to his own, her warm brown of her eyes blurring with her tears.

"Not so long I can't remember. Not so long I can't meet you here. I made a vow and I've kept my vow - I would love you forever and I wait here for you until the day you are ready to come away with me!" Hair wild, he rolled towards her, his hands beckoning, open and hot: "Are you ready? Are you at last ready, my love?"

Trembling, she brushed away the dead grasses from a stone beneath the willow to reveal a name, etched long ago. She traced the letters, remembering a sunny summer day fifty years gone, a dying Yankee soldier, and the goldenrod blooming beneath a weeping willow. "There are those who will never understand." A blast of cold air whipped the branches of the tree, grains of sleet now drifting by on the frigid breeze...

Golden light poured from his fingertips. "Let them go, Lorena! They'll never know - they'll never understand what you meant to me! They'll never understand the fire you lit inside my heart, or the love you have given to me all these years." Lips trembling, he sang as he reached out to her:

There is a future! O, thank God
Of life this is so small a part
'Tis dust to dust beneath the sod
But there, up there, 'tis heart to heart!

Webster's lyrics coalesced in the dying sun, creating a halo around the soldier. Straining through the dimming light, his eyes became alive with the glow eternal: "Take my hand!"

She held out her arms, yearning, shaking -

he knocked the wine aside; the jar rolled, precious red liquid seeping into the soil beneath him. The flower pressed into her palm as his fingers gripped hers; she gasped as he leapt across the checkered cloth, pulling her close to entwine her in his warm embrace.

Loosing her hair, he pulled her thin white curls from their braid to become red and thick as the day they met. Tumbling beneath the willow, their lips met, and she felt his soul rush into hers -

the world became warm and bright. She could no longer feel the ice, or hear the wind. All around her, the earth was becoming beautiful, the sky the color of his eyes, the summer breeze as warm as his lips on hers...

the farmhands found her the next morning, lying atop his hand-carved headstone. Frozen beneath the weeping willow where she had buried him so long ago, she smiled, serene, her white hair tangled around the golden summer flower blooming in her withered hand.

R. H. Snow’s Deep Thoughts from the Dubble-wide of D00m is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

LET's DRAW LUCKY #13 - WATCHER of the DAMNED: Rose💖🌹

Let’s draw the Watcher’s Sassy Sweetie, Rose!💖

FIGHT the SYSTEM ⭐️JOIN the REVOLUTION ⭐️READ

🔥WATCHER of the DAMNED🔥

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Cat's Life

Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedI wish to see the world through the eyes of my cat just to love where I'm at in a furry ball, curled I wish to see myself through her golden-green eyes all her wonderings, wise as she sits on my shelf The pleasures of a soullived in moments of now embracing why and how we are part of the wholea cat's life is my goal

WIDE AS THE TEXAS SKY: FIRE and ICE

Limestone Co TX, 01/15/24, 6:22PM - No Filter - Photo by my Niece 💖Stephanie Morris

R. H. Snow’s Deep Thoughts from the Dubble-wide of D00m is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

THE WINDSINGER

Winter is wailing and the wind is its Voice - let us welcome the WindSinger.

Snowflakes may fall, and it will be considered a sign of winter; likewise, the lowered clouds with their nebulous grays and dramatic rolls are considered to be wintery, a mood maker for dark thoughts and gothic yearnings. But it is the WindSinger that chants the Winter song in Texas, a low, persistent chorus, the plaintive moan from the ancient hollow trunks of the Navasota Valley.

You can hear the Wind coming all the way from the North Pole, a straight shot. No mountains, no forests, no great inland oceans to impede it; just the wide open prairie and the weight of Arctic Air, the Blue Norther rolling down the continent to visit Mexico and stay for the Winter; as it rambles along, it sings the song of the Wind, rumbling, roaring -

When you hear it coming, go and prepare a place.

Make sure it is Daytime; the Night belongs to the Night Creatures. Even so, take your gun - there are Feral Hogs about, and they can be dangerous. Leave the Back Yard, past the Chicken House, find your way to the Back Pasture. It was once a Cotton Patch, terraced and farmed by enterprising young farmers. Their legacy of Arrowhead Clover and Purple Vetch still pops up in the spring, amidst the tufts of silver bluestem and gramagrass. But the grass is short and frostbitten now - you can pass between the clumps easily as they sleep, waiting for Spring.

The Goats will follow you - do not mind them, but be aware that they can get pushy from time to time. You will meet the Grandfather Oak. He grows next to the secret spring, hidden in the Middle Pond. Be polite, and remember he is old, very old, and has seen more than we will ever know. His branches are twisted like heavy corkscrews, each turn the result of hundreds of years of growth. Before the Settlers lived here, before the Plummers, or the Comanches, the Wichita were here, he was here… reach up and touch the tip of a branch, and perhaps Grandfather will awaken.

Say hello. Perhaps he will remember us.

Keep moving, and head through the pipe gate and into the FAR back Pasture. The gate will squeak; it is part of the ambience. Just make sure to latch it when you go through, because otherwise the Goats will follow you, and this is not their territory -

this is the home of the Wild Things.

Before you lies the Ash Grove. It is a mystic place; a ravine filled with the straight, uniform trunks of Ash, all less than fifty years old. Even in their youth, they have a vibration that defies logic and science. Here the earth becomes hazy, and the air refractive and prismatic. They jostle against each other, waving their arms to the sky, a gift of the Earth from the Mother Ash after the days of the Cotton Patch. She is down close to the back pond, and is the home of the Cougar. Do not approach; she too is old, and may drop a limb if so inclined - or she may drop a cougar. They belong together. Let them have their space.

Keep to the path - it goes through the Hog wallows, down through the ruts of dried creek beds which will become vernal pools, the honeymoon beds for Alligator Snapping Turtles in the Spring. Now they are dried, and filled with Oak and Pecan leaves. Wade through the dry beds, and make your way up the slope, past the back pond where the old timers say Bigfoot was seen in 1973, by your neighbor, who drew a picture. We will not speak of that here, because some say he is still in the bottoms, in that large den on the back of the pond dam.

Up the slope, onto the Sandstone uplift, through the Golden Burro Grass and the Fescue, walk around until you find the Red Sandstone ridge, a rounded outcrop with three marks deeply etched in it, the legacy of those who lived here before us. We do not know what the marks mean - it appears they were sharpening tools, or perhaps it was where someone was driving a tractor and hit it, but… we will let them keep their secrets.

Here, in the shadow of the great twisting Oaks and the rings of Cedars, sit and wait.

Love the sky. The blue rockets into the stratosphere, all the way into outer space. Here among the trees, in this upland clearing, see the connection of this patch of Soil, the workers before you, the laborers on hot days; they too waited here, waiting for the coming of the Winter.

Let the water soothe you. This pond is old, and perhaps has Alligators, but it also has Herons and Egrets, Bitterns and Kingfishers. They too know when Winter approaches, and if you listen, they will tell you…

Lay your hands upon the Earth. You can feel it before you hear it, the rumble of an Atmospheric River, the great tumbling mass of cold rolling down from the Arctic, rushing towards us, visible as a thin line of blue haze on the endless Northern Horizon. You can feel it pulsing up through the rock, into your hands, the heartbeat of the Earth…

it is coming closer.

the moan starts, low at first. You really don’t know if it is a train perhaps, or some other thing; but the train passes, and still the moan permeates the air to the North, a song afar. Clouds spill ahead of the front, a roiling sea of violent mists and lightning strikes, splitting the sky with elemental energy. A hum springs up with it as it draws closer, the Blue Norther, the Great WindSinger, striding the Prairie and racing towards Texas, coming home -

and they all are coming home with the Wind. Rise to greet them: the Old Ones, the Wichita, the Comanche, the Settlers, the Lovers, the Fighters, the Families, the Future -

the Wind is roaring, bringing them home.

The Earth lifts all around us now, the trees, the branches, the swirl of dead leaves rising on the WhirlWind - hair whipping around us, our skirt and sleeves banners to the Four Elements; Earth, Water, Fire and Wind, all together as the Blue Norther blows in, wailing across the Prairie…

lift your hands and welcome the WindSinger.

HERE THERE BE MONSTERS

Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedFrom the graves of child-sex slaves I hear the howling shade;weeping, bones beneath the stones bemoans a curse they've laid-Woes to those who won't disclose the horror of their claim,or shame the same, yet lay the blame upon the victims' name...Hell awaits accept your fates here there be monstersEPSTEIN DOCUMENTS HERE: https://t.co/3EWk8VPKme Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when published

R. H. Snow’s Deep Thoughts from the Dubble-wide of D00m is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

DON'T FORGET THE BLACKEYED PEAS!

That’s the Sacred Christmas Hambone in there. These BlackEyed Peas are GOOD - My Mama’s 50 yr old RevereWare Pot don’t lie.

R. H. Snow’s Deep Thoughts from the Dubble-wide of D00m is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

SPOKEN WORD POETRY: TURN OF OUR YEAR

THE TURN OF OUR YEAR

Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedIt's the Eve of the Turn of our Year -let us go with our heart in our hand.Patient, we wait; God opens the gateto a world that we won't understand...Time in a trickle of sand.It's the Turn of the Year of our Eve -What is happening next? No one knows;the Truth never lies. Who lives? Who dies? For the Wind alone knows where it blows...shifting, the sand of Time flows.It's the Year of the Eve of our Turnand our Lives are a glorious song;we can't know words of lyrics unheard'til we sing as the Earth sings along...Time-sands in hands, we belongto the Ephemeral Throngas the Years turn, marching on...

PAGE AGAINST THE MACHINE

This is the Face of Imperfection - behold my Literary Rage before I am yeet

Ah, the quandary of the modern reader: to yeet, or not to yeet? That is the question… and in the face of imperfection, the answer from the Arbiters of AutoCoWrex is always to yeet.

I just perused a book and it was rife, absolutely RIFE with errors. Loaded with outdated imagery, poor word choices, repeat words and phrases, it also exhibited bad formatting, misspellings, antiquated usage, and worst of all, insensitivity. It was not written for today’s modern audiences, and other reviewers hated it.

It was my Family’s 208 year old King James Bible.

Now, many of you will tell me to yeet, based on that simple premise alone. I understand; the source material is controversial, and many question the Author. But I happen to like reading ancient books, and have a fondness for outdated spelling, so I decided to read it again, just to spite people who tell me no…

now imagine what the AutoCoWrex Arbiters would do with such a book.

Yes, Children there is a world where e e cummings does not exist, where Jack Kerouac was told to pack it in, where Zane Grey was told no one needs that many adjectives. It is the world of Pablum Publishing, the crystalline white blankness of perfect punctuation, simple spelling and updated grammar, made understandable for Idiocratic Individuals such as ourselves.

This is my version of Hell.

Can you imagine this transformative landscape, where mountainous heights of imagery and valleys of ponderous thoughts are levelled to create an endless plateau of uniformity?

You can?

Now take those words you are using, and declare them non-existent, thanks to modern sensitivity. No more mountains - they are too high! No more valleys - the lows are too low! Just the wide open plains of unending vistas, populated by projections of a future movie, written to offend no one, or perhaps a deep-faked meme, made by bots.

This is your AutoCoWrex World: every word digitally revised on a daily basis, every thought reworded to please The Powers That Be, every line formatted for perfect grammar, indistinguishable from AI...

Digital.

Dead.

Done.

Or imagine a world.

That’s it. Just imagine it. Use the words you were taught. Use the spelling you learned. Use the imagery you love -

then write it.

If it is imperfect, and you want it to be better, write it again; craft with your mind until you feel it in your bones, the work of your heart made real, living on a page. Then set it free…

Human thoughts are imperfect in the eyes of the Machine. Human words are crude to the Arbiters of AutoCoWrex - but they are real. The perfect imperfectness of Human Creativity cannot be replicated; that is why the Machine hates them, the errors of innumerable imperfect Human thoughts creating the perfect cacophany, the Chaos of Life.

Write.

Wrestle.

Wreak.

Page against the Machine.