Gathering Sticks

Gathering sticks for the hanging ferns, a sparrow on my front porch thawed herself out in the early morning silence of my coffee and recitations of the Lord's Prayer. Unlike the insecurities of my rocking chair’s thinly painted legs in the laringitic winds of an elder summer’s sudden chilling, she was secure and unbothered by doubts. The faith that God will provide.

It was almost autumn, and across the yard, at the edge of Sitton's farm, a patch of grass was rotting away, stunned beneath the heavy shadow of an old Ford. The curious rust explored the trembling atrophy of a homeplace twice-sold and now rented out; leg's and arms reaching down to the scattered ants crawling in the heavy discarded air. The anatomy of the world come of age. Inert isolation, and the new gate on the farm across the street.

As I lingered on the porch too close to the ferns, the orphaned hope fled to the gutters to make a new home. I thought about how God is a lamb laughing and drawing near to play, but too often we mistake him for a wild-eyed bull, muscle-tense and two fields over; how we, the farmhand, hold our breath and wait for the silhouette to charge but never to change; how all the while, the kids run around the saplings and count the falling leaves from the hickories; and how in history, in a yard away, against our doubts, the wind picks with coughs at the trees, the rust, and all of us.

Barking hard, the next morning found the fluttering pattern of wings in the downspout, and me beating on the side to rustle her out. She made her way to the Ford, still barking—herself, a silhouette. This small community I build between the seasons, God-charged and provided for. We teach one another how to have faith. Like two kids running around the yard, making game from the summer's sore throat; a bird gathering sticks for a home; or the neighbor buying parts for a Ford, to dream, to try, to hope.