Into the mystic

Saturday, January 11, 2014

Fog

Middle Patuxent

Fog wisps above the river surging
filled with ice and onward urging,
racing, swirling gray with melted snow

Ghostly arms cast upward pleading
stark white against the gray unheeding,
the sycamores withstand the undertow

Sunday, August 25, 2013

Church Bells and Altar Boys

Neavitt United Methodist Church- eastern shore of Maryland

The bell peals across the Marsh. It is an uneven sound and the timing is off by a minute or two. It does not peal so much as clang. It is an ill-formed bell perhaps, and almost certainly rung by hand at a small church unable to afford electronic carillons and computerized mechanisms.

A memory of when I was little comes to mind. Walking with my family into the vestibule of the old St. Louis Church. Its doors wide open to the mild Sunday morning. Faded smells of incense and paste wax linger in the air and the sun slips through stain glass windows and across the backs of simple wood pews. The priest in his vestments and two altar boys in black cassocks and freshly pressed white cottas stand in the vestibule. A rope dangles down 30 feet from the belfry. The priest grins and nods to the one of boys and the one not chosen looks on with barely concealed envy. The chosen one reaches high, grabs the rope with two hands and pulls hard, producing a faint peal. He pulls harder and the bell begins its rocking motion, and the clapper hits against the side with more confidence and more volume. Each time the rope rises, the boys hands, gripped tightly, also rise high above his head and the momentum lifts him to his toes. This bell, the bell of my memory, peals deep and true and at that moment, all I want to be is an altar boy.