Lazy River Plantation

"This is fertile ground, good plantin'...this is ripe for the plantin'."
"Says you...looks like a mess of treez and hillz an'..."
"Shuddup boy!", he said with irritation, "you are here to do the labor and not think, got it?".
"Yessir...dig, plant, and hopefully pull something up..."
"you will pull...punk."

It wasn't light when we connected out cleaving instruments to fertility, it was lonely and black and quiet.

He hoe'd a great line, I'll give it to him. He cleaned it clear to the edge of the prop. line. He worked it, and came back and worked another line, and came back and cleanded another line, and edged it until after dusk. He lined it right. She was still inside.

He lined up again and had to be told to stop, to quit. The night buzzed with crickets and the moon was lower than the half-pitched wooden fence and that showed dedication. He sat on the step of the porch writing in the moonlight, writing to things that were gone, escaped, elusive, but heartfelt, in the connection of pen to paper.

That sun rose early, his body exclaimed like a mistrial, and he went about it like he was the guilty party. More lines, more rows, more dedicated, obligated labor, more presentation. A cold man sipped a warming liquidnade on the front porch watching his rows, watching his cut, his lift, his rake, his haul, his character.

The rains came and work halted. Held about by water, by the flow, he studied his field of rows, of lines cut. He saw the wolf enter and he lifted the rifle. He halted before the trigger to know, to understand the wolf. He had to share the cuts, the rows.
He wanted to die, he wanted the powderblast yet he held the gun.

Blue of sunrise, blue of innocence and blue of turmoiled sea; blue of afterlife and blue of surrounding peace. Blue cuts him--his favorite color--blue of hope is the changing horizon, of love set free.

The garden produced something, this that the other, popped up ideas of produce, vegetables and other yield. Never understood, or captured, the blue of that season. And never understood was the way his eyes burned looking into the sky, grasping for the meaning...in a color...in a season...in what a field had to offer. Or what the orchard could produce on this beautiful dreamland, down by the river...memories stir here on a lazy afternoon...I can now simply recall the prideful harvest with a smile and wonderment.