Breaking the Frost

Blades...

Grey-brown....

Crunch.

Coated with cold powdered sugar....

Flawless crystals bruise under heavy black boots.

He knows, but turns anyhow, wanting to see.

He tracks each step from the sleeping house to his feet...

each footfall altering forever the untouched frost...

bending the dormant grass...

making hollows of dark grey-green...
Under each tread.

Only his steps, his alone.

No one else follows to deepen the imprints...

to alter the stamp with size or shape...

to disturb the singular path.

He turns back.

Agatha waits, her Jersey coat russet in delicate morning light.

She waits.

Enduring...sedate...clouds of warm breath blooming into the cold, still pasture.

She waits.

He inhales, smiles, walks on...in the frozen daybreak.

He alone owns the stillness here.

He alone dares break the frost.

Dave

One of four, unique from all
with a kickstart gait,
glittering, sunrise eyes.
A briarwood pipe
clenched in tight, white teeth
spiraled cherry tobacco smoke
upward,
twining
through taffy curls.
Hard hands gripped a Garand
Across Korea.
Watched friends die.
Cried for his own soul.
Then time marched on.
With soft voice
he declared patriotic testimony,
whispered a father's prayer,
expressed a husband's love.
Devotion and adoration
bound him,
willinghearted,
to her, the wife of many years.
Years
measured not by clocks or calendars
but by a changing of the seasons.
Their hearts held hands.
He was short in stature, yet tall in honor.
Known only by a handful here,
He will cause millions to rejoice at his arrival.
We'll see you later, Dave.

E. Strain
12/14/1995
A tribute to my uncle, Elvin David Traver
To those of us who loved him he will be sorely missed

Hunting Season

The day brought snow...tracking snow.
And the hunters.
In their neon orange vests,
and black wool pants,
they gathered.
Storm door creaks and slams.
Creaks and slams.
Creaks and slams.
Balls of snow
skid and slide
across dark linoleum.
Voices punch heavy air with rich laughter.
Snow encrusted gloves
dry in line
on a warm oven door.
Wool drapes chair backs,
warm, wet, black, red,
plaid.
Always plaid.
Gun oil, this gathering's cologne...pipesmoke, it's incense.
Open chambers, steel grey barrels, rest over hunting shirt arms.
Stocks are stroked, triggers tested.
Stories swapped.
The tradition continues.
With a chocolate bar, a box of shells,
and a dream.

E Strain
2/16/98

To enjoy more of this artist's magnificent work, visit kywildlifeartist.com

Climber's Morning

Shards of birdsong

scatter through the sleeping Valley.

Stillness is shattered.

Breezes brush

gentle fingers

over sleeping hemlock.

Rising boughs,

freshened,

stretch Heavenward,

Singing prayers

of adoration

to God.

Faithfully, light bathes the cliff side, washing it's face in Royal splendor.

This is the day that the Lord has made.

This is a climber's morning.

E. Strain

2/16/98

Once Upon a Time

The room was pink...sweet pea pink.

Crisp white cotton sheets under

cotton candy chenille bedspreads.

Pastel icing over twin beds.

White pine shelves, dark with the oil

of years of hands

choosing books.

My ABCs'

Three Bears

Treasure Island

Swiss Family Robinson.

Bindings loved to shreds, replaced with calico,

glued on with the white of an egg.

Secret cubbies, with pine cones, nicked porcelain teacups painted with violets.

Tiny dolls with gunnysack dresses and yarn hair smelling of the attic.

In the buckled plaster and paint of the ceiling,

a woman's profile,

like Grandma's cameo with a fancy frame.

Summer thunderstorms come slowly across the orchard.

The smell of warm metal and wet hay...

rain splattering off the porch roof

through the rusty screen

til darkness lowers.

Quiet voices rise through a floor register.

Fingers of light slip under the old door,

glide across worn rag rugs,

caress a brow,

kiss a sleeping angel.

E. Strain

2/16/98

Childhood Bedroom

The double-block farmhouse was well over a hundred years old. My sister and I shared the big pink bedroom that sprawled over the second floor. Memories return me to the security of that place when regression seems the only salve for life's wounds.

It's walk-in closet had a tiny, low window---perfect for a cozy playhouse. Crisp white cotton sheets were hidden by candy-colored chenille bedspreads that lay like pastel icing over our bed. Bookshelves held our favorite storybooks, their bindings loved into shreds, then carefully replaced with calico scraps held on with the white of an egg. Hand-hewn wooden shelves held our treasures---pine cones, nicked porcelain teacups painted with delicate faded violets, tiny dolls with gunnysack dresses. Long, faded blue curtains captured every warm breeze.

Faintly buckled plaster and paint made patterns in the ceiling. If I lay on my bed just right, I could see the profile of a pretty woman, like my gramma's cameo, complete with a fancy frame.

During summer thunderstorms, we'd lay across my bed overlooking the porch roof and watch the world turn shimmering green and wet. The rain spattered off the roof, filtered through the rusty screen, and flicked drops on our cheeks and lips.

At night, quiet voices rose with the warm air from the floor grates. fingers of light from the hall lamp slipped under our door and spread over the rag rugs by our beds, giving us the feeling of being safe and guarded.

South Mountain

At the top of old South Mountain,
In the Pennsylvania hills,
There’s the ring of waking birdsong
In the early morning chill.
Sunlight warms the moss-cloaked granite
Of an ancient field stone row.
Then filters through white birches
Where the pale green sweet ferns grow.
Misty fog that shrouded landscape
Veiling all in opaque green,
Has now faded with the morning
Painting leaves with dewy sheen.
Beneath layers of rich leaf mold
In all shades of nut-brown earth
The sweet, tiny Winterberry
Presses forth for all it’s worth!
Deeper still the fresh spring waters
Flow beneath the tangled roots
To fill waiting moss-lined reservoirs,
dark homes for bright red newts.
Life is new and fresh and singing, tonic for the soul within
Among maple stands in April, at the top of old South Mountain.

E. Strain
Spring, 2000

Faerie

Faeries arrive in the charm-struck moment.
Sun sets without waking Moon.
Light clings, hovering.
Air is suspended, the wood holds it’s breath and listens.
Swirling, a streaking thread through evening mist, parting the heavy, still air, leaving empty trails inches wide in their wake.
The wings, hundreds, heard before beheld.
Tiny, ethereal, with color barely there, visible when they, being only shapes of energy, alight a curved, arthritic branch for but a moment.
Then the heat diffusing the darkness, shards of light, glittering off gnarled Oak bark.
The dance has begun.
Minikin fingers, illuminant slivers, entwine.
Warmth marries light as a dervish of hushed wings spin, a luminous vortex of tinkling laughter, finally bursting apart in abandon.
Opalescent limbs loop through fireflies, snatching at beetle wings with milky-white toes.

Snippets of rose petals, wrinkled, softened by tiny fingers, sewn with gossamer cobweb, wreath imperceptible waists and shoulders.
Dewdrops, balanced on ethereal palms become gazing balls.
Faces, appearing in the roundness, laugh.
The laughter finds a muse in cricket music and the Bohdran beat of a ruffled grouse.

The charm-struck moment before Moon end; it draws breath, consuming the twilight.
Only iridescent wings glint, converging on the Faerie Ring.
Perched, each to a cap, their silver song slips into the spirit of those before them.
Ancient voices, quickened from time before time
Blend, swell, fill the wood.
An eternal lullaby, and the wood sleeps.
~E. Strain~
2007

To see more exquisite faeries, view the incomparable work of Brian Froud at http://worldoffroud.com/index.html