POETRY
Frost Lies Heavy Like a Young Snow
“Frost Lies Heavy…” read by Ernest Edward Pickel.
Frost lies heavy on the field this morning — like a young snow, my grandmother would say. Rolling ground, long silent of mule and chain, becomes a winter-grey profile against a tree line displaying the last green vestiges of summer. Foggy man-shapes working the hay field for rabbit and quail melt into the horizon as a warm autumn sun slowly wins the morning.
Worked all my life, my grandmother would say — dug a garden where the schoolhouse now sits. Felt the cool spring soil sift through my fingers. Frosts of October, the season’s first fire — hickory wood cut by Papa’s strong arms.
Papa walked through that field one dark morning — hay stubble breaking under work-worn boots. He would not return that day or any. No clop clop of steps against the rock walk. Little noses pressed against a cold pane — beans and cornbread wasted on the table. Her pillow-soft child hands would never again hold his — the boys forever fatherless.
Young snows choke life from switchgrass and bluestem in the meadow where potatoes once grew. Towhead boys, bundled warmly, hugged tightly, clop clop as they walk down the stony path. Giddy laughter breaks the morning stillness. Highland winters turn her boys into men. Boots in the hayfield — walk like Papa walked.
Her memories are soft like winter’s first snow — tears often for the loss she was given. Little boys become men; men become dust. In between, a fleeting mountain vapor melts heavenward as dark becomes morning — all things made new. But for now, oak-stained stones mark her family’s place.
Covenant
“Covenant” read by Ernest Edward Pickel.
Autumn dogwoods bleed deep red. Leaves glide down to cool, damp grass — a patchwork quilt for the coming cold. Sumac berries ripen to provide winter communion for chickadees and sparrows. This is the new covenant in the veins of the sourwood — a promise that barren limbs will live again. November rain wets summer’s drought dust, pushing bee balm and trillium into rich dark humus to live again when winter’s snow melts into spring. You baptize this wood in the crimson flow of elderberry and smear its gates with bloodroot. Though these hills be as scarlet, they will be white with laurel blooms greeting me at sunrise on Easter morning.
Ernest Edward Pickel is a faith-oriented prose poet. He earned an undergraduate degree in Anthropology and a graduate degree in Psychology — both from the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. He and his wife have two grown daughters and live on the Cumberland Plateau (Sand Mountain) in northeast Alabama. His poetry has been published in the Birmingham Arts Journal, Heart of Flesh Literary Journal, and Resurgam.
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