The Colors of Winter

December 2011

Naked oaks
crunchy brown leaves
a deck of wood slats
and green moss on the north side of things.
A hint of yellow left
from a Fall that has said goodbye
and will not return for yet a little while.
A heavy wood gate.
Closed.
A dog barks in the cold and gray.
Cottage bricks rounded and shaped
strong and old clinging together
with mortar from ages past.
Steps to the porch.
Cold window panes.
Doors ornate with Christmas wreaths.
Lighted trees glowing, reflecting.
Sweet ornaments with
last year's photographs of children's faces
framed in delicately knitted circles.
Red, green
The colors of Winter.
There's a welcome here.
Chimney smoke
the fragrance of wood burning.
Sparks on a hearth.
Holly Noel—the perfect Christmas name.
A good cup of coffee
the taste of caramel.
A verse for the day.
A quiet moment.
Fellowship.
Joy divine.
To lean, depend.
Mercy drops and
Grace in abundance.
And the coveted Gift of Hospitality
freely shared.

What more could a great-grandmother desire?

Jane Bennett Gaddy
Trinity, FL

Comments

It was Over... The South Was Defeated

Isaac Payne rode with the last of his company to Appomattox on April 10 with no inkling of what to expect. He waited outside the perimeter. Enlisted men were not allowed to be present on the streets of the Courthouse area. Only commanding officers. Isaac was emaciated, just like all the other southern patriots who leaned hard against the white picket fence that surrounded the township. Tired, empty, and disheartened, they waited to know the end of the story. One man could scarcely be identified from the next. They all looked the same. Withered and wasted. Isaac dismounted and patted Glory. She was his only earthly possession besides his weapons. His only connection to home. He gripped the bridle and pressed his face to her thin neck, unconsciously rubbing his hand over her protruding bones. If he looked up in the distance he might see his father and brother riding the dusty road to Appomattox to join him, but how could that be? They were dead. The thought of their absence and

Upon These Fields of Glory—

It was hot and muggy. Historians declare it was steamy . Such is Mississippi in the summertime. From the banks of the swollen Tishomingo River on June 10, 1864, Union soldiers jumped by the thousands to escape the fire of a burning, raging battle in the Northeastern corner of the Sovereign State of Mississippi, in a little community known as Brice's Cross Roads. Confederate Major General Nathan Bedford Forrest pulled out all the stops to pull off one of the fiercest and most strategic battles of the Civil War. He won that battle, hands down. Late spring rains caused the narrow stream of water to overflow its banks. Union troops by the thousands, under the command of Brigadier General Samuel D. Sturgis slogged the gently sloping hills, their wagon trains pulled by mules dotting the landscape like flies on molasses, covering miles and miles of muddy terrain, until that day, untouched except by a few farm houses, a Reformed Presbyterian church, and an old log house, all set beneat

A Proper Welcome Home . . .

... After All These Years! My brother was born on May 28, 1945, the year World War II ended. In August of that same year, the Japanese had surrendered unconditionally. Unknown to my brother, who was less than three months old, the winds of war blew fiercely somewhere else on the far side of the earth as the Japanese occupied a spot north of the sixteenth parallel after the War had ended. In September of that year, Ho Chi Minh, leader of the Viet Minh, declared the Democratic Republic of Vietnam before a crowd of some 500,000 in Hanoi. But the major allied victors of World War II— the United Kingdom, the United States, and the Soviet Union—all agreed the area belonged to the French. As the French had not the wherewithal to retake Vietnam at the time, the major powers agreed that British troops would occupy the South and the Nationalist Chinese, the North. On September 14, 1945, Chinese forces disarmed the Japanese troops north of the sixteenth parallel and the British landed i

Search This Blog