Summertime.

Summertime is when you fall deeply in love with things that you wouldn't otherwise.

You run barefoot everywhere and the park and field become your new first home and it is a very good thing. It is when you lay in ankle high grass and watch the stars walk from horizon to horizon and then they fall off into the great morning flood. And you fall in love with fast melting sno-cones and sandal tanned feet. And the heat doesn't seem to bother us like it did when it first come on. But we still rush from car to house, house to car taking refuge in the sweet feel of the air conditioning.

Summertime is this almost unrealistic part of our lives in which we are able to run and swim without inhibitions.

Summertime brings a love of heat and humidity that saves our frail bodies from the winter chill.

Our shirts stick to our backs as beads of sweat bleed down our tanned temples and soak into them. It becomes just right to sit in the park at night and watch the consolations change into the things that we see in our dreams. And in those parks and fields the scent of grass and humidity merge and rush from person to person.

We covet the idea of summer freedom and hold it tightly to our breast as we rush around with our life's loves.

Those loves who we know deeply in a way that only God himself could have orchestrated.

And we cling to them, we cling to the idea of them because we know that being alone in the summertime is no way to be. Because we know that being alone is horrible and, even though we hate our weakness, we still want to be with them.

And tangled within these loves, in that park, you see her.

She is wearing that summer dress and she has bare feet and a flower in her soft hair. And it is then and there that your summertime love starts. You read Gibran to her and whisper into her ear when no one is looking, and you both love the feelings it brings. And together, you run and swim and talk and rest with one another and you learn one another. And this is good, and you thank Him for it and He is glad.

He gives love and joy to those who seek him. In the summertime is when He moves through the warm breeze and hot summer nights when summertime girls will chase summertime boys through the July rain. And it is here that we can see the physical smile of God. When His children bond and play and love and explore His creation together.

Yes, it is in the summertime when we take true ownership of the freedom we are given. When we can read the books that have long eluded us and that make our hearts long for something that it never had before. And we start thinking about changing things and making things better and we do it, we actually do it!

We move and shake and toss things into the sun filled air and we love it. And then, a cool crisp wind blows through the park, down the street, through the alley and onto your front porch and it is then that you know. Autumn is coming.

So, you run through the fields of gold one last time and you kiss her on the mouth under the full oak tree and it is right and it is good. And then it is over and you wait once again. You wait for the love of a melting sno-cone and the feel of a sweat filled shirt clinging to your back.

And you wait once again for the summertime.

A machinist and a farmer and a son.

He sat there at the diner with that old stale sun resting it's face behind tired mountain tops. He wondered if he and this man would have anything to speak on.

Those simple questions began to run through his mind. The type of questions that can plague a man until he is placed in the ground.

Finally an old, weathered man walked in through the door seeming as though he were looking for a pair of lost keys.

"Over here old man."

Now was the time.

A time of reconciliation and peace.
A time for men to sit and be men.

And at the same time, there as no room for thoughts like this.

The old leather bag of a man sat down at the counter next to him and just looked straight at the tiled wall.

"Thanks for coming dad."

"Least I coulda' done I'd supposed."

"Thanks."

The two of them sat there on those worn out stools as if they were two distant strangers who were meeting for the first time.

He was the son of a farmer and machinist.

His father worked his fingers to the bone and then some. In 54' he had to pull the machinist job at the parts factory when the drought hit. For about two years those rains failed us and that's about when mama left us.

"You want some coffee pop?"

"Nah, don't touch the stuff no more."

His father was a man who believed that the fewer the words used the better. He had been that way ever since his children could remember.

"I ain't got much time, I gotta get back to the mill."

"OK dad."

"But son, I do have one thing I been needing to say to ya."

His father was a man of the land, a man or dirt and soil and earth. Not of words.

And now that his dad had something worth while to speak about he was unsure how to prepare himself.
He moved uncomfortably on his stool until he just stopped and tried hard to listen.

"I know I'm not a man of words, but I'ma try."

"I've been hard to live with I know, your mother could have told ya that. But I need you to know that I love ya."

The two men sat there for a while longer not saying much.

Then they simply just got up together and walked out to there old trucks and went on to their farms that stretched from county to county.

And that was that.

And he knew that now he and his father had nothing else to think over.
Nothing more to say.
There were no more secret words that needed to be unearthed.

And the son sat on his porch with his beautiful wife and two young boys and watched the southern stars climb in the night sky.

While his father sat perfectly still, without breathe, perfectly quiet.

The Ballad of a man named Jeremiah Foreseth.

He drove an old pick-up that looked like a farmers history book.

One head light dimmer than the other and a long barbed-wire scratch down to the tail of the truck. It carried memories of William and how they became men together. He would most likely never get it fixed.

He sat low in the bench seat with his red wings pressin' the petal to the floor. Movin' on to somewhere that he didn't know.

Patched, earth ridden wranglers sat unwillingly on his boney hips as his bill fold shown from his back pocket.

A pearl snap hung on his shoulders like a draped flag does on a flagpole. He'd lost some weight since that past winter.

He had just finished a seven week job on a threshing crew stretchin' from Amarillo to Bartlesville. His hands shown freshly with the signs of labor. He loved his scars and scratches and wore them as if medals from a distant war. He found honor in knowing that his work fed America.

He loved that his lunch breaks were spent looking out over the fields of gold.

Simplicity was his lover.

He was still a younger man, not yet in his late thirties.

His love left him back in '57 when he had gone for a job in northern Oklahoma. He got back to Texas and found a note on his icebox. Said something about needing more from life and then she apologized for having to take his truck. He never did get mad about it, he just went and bought an old Ford and started the process of forgetting.

We never did hear him talk about her again. It was like she was a ghost and a spring breeze had blown her away somewhere to the east.

Then one day he drank himself into a stooper and fell asleep on the old freight tracks and the Lord took him home.

No one ever said anything about that.

But if you ask anyone they will tell ya that he was a good man. A man who gave his life to the earth and to the men who he shared it with.

A man who was inspired by the reflections of God off the grain.

A man who knew that his time was not his own.

A man who knew he was only a man.

His name was Jeremiah.

Watch TV with sleepy eyes.

Sit low in thickly armchairs.

Engulf slothfully decadent mattresses.

Foretell often the secrets of couches.

Drown in the partiality of a luke warm bath.

Listen in quiet contempt for the stories of carpet.

And then go out to the ledge on the bridge connected to the road by the lake on the edge of town near the old oak.

There, we will find none of the things that keep us indoors.

Because we were meant for so much more.