Author: Brian Allain

It was once the custom to deliver a basket of flowers to the neighbors, ring the bell, and run. It is also a time to consider the questions of justice and labor, for we will reap what we sow.

Flora,
a photo of a rose,
the memory of your hand
reminds me
of a planting springtimes ago.

A family crisis is in bloom.
Our drama of odds
our trauma of ends turns toxic
and finds its way home.

Mayday! Mayday! Mayday!

My chore in the chaos?
Keep watch on the meadow. Clean out the spring.
My part in the chorus?
Plant peas and potatoes, sensible things.

It’s hard to stand guard over Spring.
I tire of bland basics.
I weary of row upon rows:
I long for rings, rings of roses,
But who will conspire?
Who will plant dangerous things?

At ninety-three
you sit supreme in the swing
holding court on the porch with a calico cat,
a kind of coon dog,
and several stray bees.

I help you and the shovel ,
out of the shade.
The decision’s been made.
We go in search of the roses.

You sit. I dig.
You nod. I dig deeper.
You sigh. I keep digging.

“You work too hard.
You know, you work too hard.”

It’s the first of May, Flora, .
The green roots of nature
and the red roots of labor
tangle together in this country’s side.

I work among ghosts of victory gardens.
My fingers trace your calloused hands
on the worn handle, in the dark leaves,
under this green piece of land.

Should well-soiled hands receive a living wage?
Each turn of my spade reveals roots of your labor.
New things grew tender under your sun.
You were a May Day Queen and Sage.

Under the half-dead apple tree
on the first day in May
we spend an afternoon
as if Time is not Money
but Free.

“M’aidez!” Grandma. “M’aidez”.
Help me remember.
Fall is falling and winter closes.
Once we labored; it was spring,
and together we planted the roses.

Heather Murray Elkins (Copyright 2015)

Two 50 lbs. sacks of Kentucky 31 grass seed are stacked under the Angel Well house waiting for a sower and a sunny day. The Earth Day forecast was Cloudy, but a hard rain is falling, so the grass seed will have to wait a little longer. The patch of earth behind the Inn has been cleared of the rubble created by re-construction that went from the roofs to the floorboards. It took five dump truck loads to reveal the ground again. It’s hard to know when it’s a time to keep and when it’s time to let go. The ground needs breathing room; there are apple trees to plant, and the grass is waiting, so it’s time to sow.

Grass for holding the earth in place. Grass for the four-leggeds to roll in. Grass for greening the gray. Grass for all the grave matters of life. I turn to the poetics of the unknown prophet of Exile, beginning in the book of Isaiah, chapter 40.

A voice says, “Cry!”
And I said, “What shall I cry?”
All people are grass,
their constancy is like the flower of the field.
The grass withers, the flower fades,
when the breath of the Lord blows upon it;
Surely the people are grass.
The grass withers, the flower fades;
but the word of our God will stand forever. Isaiah 40:6-8

I study the Angel Well house, the sacks of grass, the stacks of straw.
If the blistering heat of our Deathbreath continues,
where will the Word of God stand,
how can it take root
if the earth is missing?

“When lilacs last in the dooryard bloom’d”…

I planted two lilacs today. The planting was scheduled to mark the 150th anniversary of Lincoln’s death this last Wednesday, but the post office delivered them to a surprised someone in Elizabeth New Jersey. My new order arrived today, just as the rain stopped, so my older sister and I prepared a place they can call home. I didn’t say why I’d ordered them, but she recited the first line of Whitman’s lament for Lincoln as we cleared away the clover and the dandy lions. Lilacs for Lincoln. They’re planted on either side of a squared space of brick, right in front of the parlor window. My younger sister laid the brick in her season of owning this old inn. It’s been waiting for its purpose and the lilac anniversary provided it. Soon and very soon a hand carved statue of Lincoln will stand here between the lilac bushes. He was the authorizer of our identity as a state. He signed the Emancipation Proclamation and approved a new state almost in the same breath. West-by God-Virginia. We seceded from the Confederacy. Mountaineers are always free.

That history is harder to decipher these days. Every Pioneer Day, for example, an entire regiment of Confederate re-enactors set up camp by the Elizabeth Courthouse. A mock battle is fought between the Rebels and the Yanks. The Rebels always win. This year a young Union officer was shot and fell right beside the sign that reads “Little Kanawha Hotel, 1800”. It helps to know that winners and losers brush themselves off, put their weapons down, and have a beer together. It also is important to keep track of the number of Confederate flags displayed year round in trucks and homes. It’s still the war that everyone refers to as “The War,” and discussions about seceding from the Union aren’t just history lessons. Putting a statue of Lincoln in the front yard will be our way of joining the conversation.

The lilacs’ late arrival formed a strange time warp between the 150th anniversary of Lincoln’s death and the 20th anniversary of the Oklahoma bombing. Before he drove the truck/bomb into the city, Timothy McVeigh donned a T-shirt bearing an image of Lincoln and the words, “Sic semper Tyrannis”.”This always to tyrants!” is what Brutus shouted during Caesar’s assassination. John Wilkes Booth shouted those words after he shot Lincoln. They were/are the Virginia state motto.

Will the rare sweet fragrance of “with malice toward none, with charity for all” survive our smoky choke hold of violence, our love of uncivil wars?

The leaves on the small plants droop, then straighten as they settle in at the Apple Pi Inn. What state will we be in when these lilacs first bloom?

When lilacs last in the dooryard bloom’d,
And the great star early droop’d in the western sky in the night,
I mourn’d, and yet shall mourn with ever-returning spring.

Ever-returning spring, trinity sure to me you bring,
Lilac blooming perennial and drooping star in the west,
And thought of him I love.

O powerful western fallen star!
O shades of night—O moody, tearful night!
O great star disappear’d—O the black murk that hides the star!
O cruel hands that hold me powerless—O helpless soul of me!
O harsh surrounding cloud that will not free my soul.

In the dooryard fronting an old farm-house near the white-wash’d palings,
Stands the lilac-bush tall-growing with heart-shaped leaves of rich green,
With many a pointed blossom rising delicate, with the perfume strong I love,
With every leaf a miracle—and from this bush in the dooryard,
With delicate-color’d blossoms and heart-shaped leaves of rich green,
A sprig with its flower I break.
Walt Whitman

The upstairs rooms in this old Inn are named, decorated, and dedicated. There’s a judge’s room, an oilman’s room, a school room, an angel room, and so on. I visit the preacher’s room as this Easter day comes to a close. It is filled with treasures that are difficult to distinguish from trash unless you know the story. Methodist preachers stayed here during the early days of its life as an Inn. Baptist preachers from the family tree smile from their frames on the wall. I see going away gifts from churches I once served, and hymnals of all shapes, ages, and denominations.

Easter is almost over. I watch the dust motes dance and remember with gratitude all those country preachers, all those pastors of small congregations, all those who began the day saying, “Christ is risen!” then waited for a response that means the church is still alive.

For those who rose long before sunrise to be sure there were enough song sheets…
For those who proofread the flower list one last time…
For aging sopranos who find just the right notes for a joyful noise…
For those who count the heads in the pews just in case they need a miracle of loaves 
at the communion table…
For all who have a love/hate relationship with lilies…
For all who hope that this year’s Easter sermon will raise the dead…
Let angels guide you to your rest this night 
and tomorrow may you rise.

Any sign of life? I’ve waited to ask that question all through this icy winter and stormy spring. The problem is, I don’t know what I’m looking for. There’s been a memory wipe of gardening wisdom between my mother’s mother, Flora Belle, and me. She had two green thumbs and all the rest of her fingers knew how to help things grow. So, I’m in the dark on this bright Saturday as I search for signs of life in the dogwood I planted last fall. Is a small brown bud a good sign? How many dead branches can a life survive?

It was a summer leftover, a Charley Brown kind of a bush. It was definitely on sale; the compost pile was its next stop. I would have, should have kept walking, but looking at it made me sad. That small sad added to my deep sigh over the death of my son’s beloved West Virginia coon dog. That good dog had gotten him through college, graduate school, and into a job. I’d promised him that we’d plant a memory tree down by the riverside of the old inn. I’d gone shopping for a pine tree, but providence kept pinching me. “Rescue dogwood to honor a rescue dog.”

The dogwood legend belongs to this wholly human Saturday. A giant green tree is turned into a means of state-sanctioned torture and death. In shame it begs its Creator to remove its power, reduce its “treeness” so it could not be used for harm again. These are the embroidered blossoms that decorate my mother’s calendar/towel. Perhaps the petals are evidence of forgiveness, as the story goes.

So what are the signs of life, and when is hope ridiculous? I can’t answer that. Not today. Maybe tomorrow.

What makes this Friday sad?
Good wood and nails are turned into torture.

What makes this Friday Good?
Our rubble reveals the old rugged cross.

What makes this Friday glad?
All will be well in the strong hands of God.

Palm Sunday is often Parade Sunday in small churches with a strong Sunday school tradition. This is one time that kids can be heard as well as seen, according to the scriptures. Real palm branches aren’t required; green paper works just fine as long as it’s being waved about by children who are actually encouraged to run up and down the aisles and make loud noises. Children in parades are the holy stuff of Palm Sunday, along with a lot of singing, sometimes dancing, and definitely the sound of clapping hands. Not even grumpy grownups can resist a great Palm Parade.

But why a parade, aside from the fact that there’s one in the scripture lesson for this Sunday? Someone special was coming. Someone who made a difference between down and up. Someone who changed a loss into a win. An ordinary somebody who’d become extraordinarily important to their friends, their neighbors, their hometown, and not to stretch the point, the entire nation.

That’s what made the first Palm Parade different from all the others. Somebody who was SOMEBODY was coming to town. Every corner, every window, every sidewalk would be decorated. There would be banners, and signs, and definitely ribbons. There would be clapping and waving and definitely dancing in the streets.

I saw that kind of parade once: the Wirt County homecoming parade for Jessica Lynch, July 22, 2003. She was an American soldier, POW/MIA, a national icon, but in her own words, “I’m just a country girl at heart.” A country girl who dreamed of being a kindergarten teacher and enlisted in the Army so she could afford go to school. In the years since her rescue, Jessica finished her first college degree, did her teacher training in the same elementary school she attended as a child in Wirt County, and is a teacher. That’s a West by God Virginia tradition: serve your country and get an education. In the years since that parade she has continued to educate her community about service, and struggle, truth and virtue. I pass the road sign with her name on it and remember her friend, Lori Ann Piestewa, a fallen hero, a Hopi warrior. I remember her because Jessica doesn’t let us forget Lori Ann or any of the others who continue to put themselves in harm’s way in a war that isn’t over.

I think about the yellow ribbon that I took down after the parade that day. I keep it with my Easter things. Wasn’t he was just a country boy? He spoke a truth that the Powers That Be didn’t like. He loved the little children, all the children of the world. He offered his life, not for a nation, but for us, all of us, red and yellow, black, and white. He shows us the truth that lasts, the truth that takes a lifetime to learn: love is stronger than death. That’s the lesson. That’s why we call him, “Teacher”.