House of Heart by Holly Rene Hunter (best life changing books .TXT) 📕

Bodies entwined, they lose
perception of time.

The Moselle River Valley is bursting.
Its sleepy rivulets meandering through
staked grape vines. They align the
fragile canvas of their eyes,
Imagining they will remain here forever.

Because It Is There

Climbing my body the sea breaks below my chin. Inconsequential debris to the living things washing past me. I dare not imagine what these host may be, me a mere visitor.

My pale skin soaks up rays, I want to drift away but stay saving that for another day. My toes dig into the ocean floor, their momentum drives me. On cue my arms dig troughs propelling me into a silent void where my breathing can be heard and my heart bursts adrenalin shutting out the sound of the world.

Uncertain my tenacity will carry me, the tiny island, my destiny, juts from the sea, its understated boundaries declare “this land is mine and will always be”.

Flipping upward I float eyes closed, afraid I’ve miscalculated capability, thankfully a large waves drops me indecorously onto the shore. Am I the first to set footprint on this slice of earth, the first of my kind this place has seen? At the shore I set sail from sea gulls soar, dark angles in the azure sky.

From my vantage point the world is beautiful, the palm sways and waves his fronds fond farewell…He seems so all alone.

Wings Thrumming 

I drift on an opalescent breeze,

dreams flower in my hair

They shed in heaps of autumn leaves

red and gold and green.

I am traveling far from childhood,

where dreams were never welcome.

Transparent skies cast a tattered shadow

 a Mayan god takes flight,

thrumming ancient wings. 

Dedicated to missing girls of

Chibok

How long has it been since the door burst open?

Fist-eyes stare at the ceiling.

A click of the lock, a hand over the mouth,

muffled cries dissolve in sweat.

The ebb and flow of insects across a filthy floor;

How long has it been?

Bonaventure

Once the grounds of a plantation, it spreads over acres, behind the parish to a stand of trees, as far as the eye can see.

Marble statues adorn the finest sites. The grounds keepers rake and sweep, they don’t look at me as I wander among the head stones, careful of burial sites,  respectful of the dead.

Near the trees water floods graves that have sunk beneath the spongy earth.  A  statue lies above the lead. It's marble yellowed over the years, the grave keepers promise to scrub them but not yet.

Further out, a few metal grave markers date back to the revolutionary war, they lean as though they may topple in the lightest breeze. Most of them  marked “unknown”.

Then the graves from  the civil war, their names etched into  the plaques, blessed are they to return to Dixie. In a family plot, surrounded by stone, an entire family lies. Generations going back to arrivals from Wales and foreign lands, as far as the eyes can see. A double vault holds a man and wife, beside them three tiny headstones all dated within their first year.

At my father's grave, I wipe the marble cover with cleaner and polish it to a shine, I don’t know why. His  grave is isolated, having given up her ashes he is all alone. I placed the yellow mums in the funnel shaped container, they look cheerful In the bright sunlight. I think these will be the last I bring for him, I doubt I will ever return.

Film Noir

We have been traveling for hours. The relentless tedium   transforms monotony into a restless frenzy of short-tempered barbs and endless cigarettes, one lighting the other. My eyes are red spheres squinting at a slippery ribbon of highway through streams of rain that slip around the wipers and drift into my periphery; they are a metronome swinging from the rear view mirror to the road ahead.

Fiddling with the radio dial, she searches for “Cottontail” but all she retrieves is swing. I adjust my fedora lower, relieving my eyes with the godsend of her gams climbing up to heaven. She smiles knowingly and looks away, deliberately hiking the hem of her skirt. She is a  marvel of  blissful arches and cattail limbs and I allow myself the luxury of a brief fantasy.  She is dreaming of the things she will do with her take while we enjoy a reprieve from reality.

Spotting a neon sign, I back off the pedal and swerve down a side road to the cheap hotel below it. Escaping the rain we slam the door behind us where she applies fresh makeup and brushes a blizzard of  platinum.  Her breasts pressed against me she whispers a throaty sigh, “fix me a drink, will you baby?”

At the edge of the bed she slithers from her slip, a smoky eyed toy in stilettos, sweat from her glass drips down her midriff pooling at her belly. Tortuously unbuttoning my shirt, my breath is a hot prayer; my lips find hers and all the right places remarkably precise and voracious.

The sound of the sirens are lost in desire, the sedan sits outside where I left it, abandoned except for a stash of jewels and a cleverly concealed derringer.

   Muscadine

Spring’s misty curtain hung over daffodils and crepe myrtles. The crystal brook flowed past the arbor where never ending appendages draped the trellis, its canopy sagging under the weight of vines and clusters of translucent nipples clinging tenaciously. The scent of pepper and asparagus emanated from the earth.

Grandfather snaked garden hose through the lattice work To discourage white tail deer from ravaging the vines, a guise that sometimes worked. Growing past fields of wildflower and cotton wood trees in a place known only as “the branch”, a well-known lovers rendezvous. I understood that this was a private place.

Soon the clammy dragons of summer breathed their fiery breath and grapes ripened. Bursting skin dripped juices from the luminous fruit and they were declared  ready for harvest. Ruptured with a pestle and filtered, they were processed according to a secret method known only to Grandfather and son and stored in ceramic jars. Sweet and crisp, the wine was  underdeveloped but pleasant.

Rarely did my father materialize from his travels once I was delivered to my Grandparents summer. Somehow harvesting the grapes invoked his presence like a lark at dawn.

Beneath the China Berry Trees

I recall the big white house on the top of a hill, peaceful pastures surrounding it. Though it was fenced, still I woke at times to the face of a curious horse gazing in my bedroom window.

The yard was bare earth and spread to the tobacco barns where sweet smelling leaves tied to their sticks by the handers and lupers were stacked to the roof. How pungent and pleasant it was. I would be chased away on the advice that it might be harmful for me only to return with my fine friend from down the lane. 

I sometimes watched the croppers beneath the China Berry trees, grateful for an occasional breeze, stringing and singing their gospel that spread through the farmland and out into the countryside. I listened in wonder at the beauty of it.

 I once tried to string tobacco and fell into the rhythm of it without recognizing it. My hands grew tired and I had the option of begging off and returning to the comfort of the big white house. Soon I would leave for the city and forget all about the gospel singing and bleeding hands that strung the back-bone of this nation.

 Cotton Field

It was August, the dog-days  of Summer. No more trips to the river to cool off for fear of the dreaded disease lurking in the muddy bottom. The Friday fish fry’s at Johnson’s Ferry were over for this year. From the back porch I alternated peeling peaches and reading scripture to Ada, from there I could see the field hands. Picked up before dawn and carted in the back of my Grand Dad’s truck to their destination. A gigantic polka dot table cloth spread over the field beneath the blistering sun. Strapped around their necks, long sacks trailing behind them. Some of them wore  gloves, most were  without and  plucked the miniature clouds of cotton from the dry bristles of the plant with bare fingers,  swooping in  out like birds, they bent nearly to the ground. They had been there since five that morning and would remain till the sun went down.

I once begged to pick and after many rejections Ada sewed a strap to an old flour sack and sent me off with the rest. Withiin an hour I begged and pleaded to leave the field. The hot sun blistered my pale freckled skin and bristles tore at my flesh. My tender fingers resembled small sausages, red and swollen. The tears flowed and I howled for Grand Dad to rescue me from the torture. My fellow harvesters chuckled and a few laughed out loud and called me “little cotton face”. God, my pride hurt, but not so much as my damn fingers and I dropped my small sack and ran back to the farmhouse and hid. Now, I try not to look at the laborers. It sends a sinking feeling to my gut, a literal pain,knowing the tenacity needed to endure their plight. I recall once a young black boy climbed up onto the tractor at the edge of the field. I ran out, in need of a playmate, and climbed beside him. We sat together, pretending to plow. Later, My Grand Dad snatched me up like a tuber from the garden and told me never to go near the black boy again or he would thrash me good. I cried until I ran dry, bewildered as to what I had done to provoke such wrath from him ,who to that day had never raised his voice to me. Years have passed since the days of my childhood, but the wounds inflicted by the old south remain with me still, like faint scars on my white skin from the day I picked cotton.

Do you remember still the falling stars that like swift horses through the heavens raced and suddenly leaped across the hurdles…Rainer Maria Rilke

My animal guide is a Falcon

with   wings spread wide

still I never glide over snow

covered mountains or deserts

come alive with cactus flower

below a sunset fading like

autumns overripe fruit.

Even  in dreams I concede  I am not a bird

but never really earthbound.

art by Karol Bak