Snippet

I’m a tender of graves.

I’m a keeper of secrets.

I’m a teller of stories few care to hear.

I’m a teacher who has lost her way.
I’m a writer who is still seeking her craft.
I’m a prayer with an answer unknown.
I’m a Christian with faith that God gives me through song.
I’m a friend, kin, wife and mother with a love so strong.
Will the gold of my past endure or will it turn brass?
Will the soul of my present find joy in a world it doesn’t know?
Will my future be wise with lessons learned on the way?
Who will be with me in those final days?
Will I gather them round me then-the secrets, and the stories, the prayers, the Loves, and the songs-the gold of the past, the joy of the soul, and in finality, the lessons learned as the Master leads me
Home?   


Today a snap shot story and then maybe another one tomorrow:

The researchers and biologists say they don't exist, not in the Eastern woodlands, at least. Folklore. The Black Panther. The cat that screams like a woman at night. I never heard one cry but my Father said he had in his boyhood and as far as I know he never lied about anything. But, I saw one.

We were hunting. I was young, preteen. I don't remember what forest but I know we were in the deep woods because Daddy had said he'd better mark our way in because if he got turned around a person could walk for acres out here and not find a way out. That's why I think it was a black panther. I would have written it off as the feral cousin of some long ago domesticated black tom cat but we were just too far back.

We had come to a clearing and paused to rest. Then from above and to my left abit came a rustling from the branches of a tree.  I turned in time to see a compact black form drop straight down.  It was the sound that convinced more than anything.  That black shape hit the duff of leaves with a tremendous thud.  This was no sound connected to the twisting flex of a house or barn cat collecting itself in free fall to land lightly on its paws.  This thud was all solid power. Like a boxer’s punch it had hit the ground.  It stayed low but the speed was incredible.  At no time did I feel scared because I sensed that in that living thing’s DNA it wanted more away from me than I could imagine.  Don’t get me wrong, it didn’t run away scared, it just decided to be there and the next second it decided to be gone.  Maybe that’s why people say they are myth.  Things might have been different if it had been dusk, certainingly different if it had been dark, but then, we would not have been in THOSE woods at night, not unless things had gone very badly, indeed.  I remember looking at my Father and asking him if he saw it.  He said, yes, he had.  Was it a panther, the black cat?  Sure looked like it he said.  We retraced the happenings for a moment to commit it to memory, cause we never could remember the details of a story the way my Mother could and then we moved on.  Times dwindled with my Father in the woods as I grew up.  Now I rarely even enter a copse of trees.  I miss it.