Smell of bacon frying in the black cast iron skillet, grits, homemade biscuits and eggs anyway you like, served hot with butter and jelly – not jam

Sunshine streamed through the window calling come outside one and all – the day promises to be long

Bike or pool? – maybe both! and the smell of honeysuckle and wild roses blooming on the fence filled the air with sweetness and a knowingness that God exists

Creek behind cabin, promised hours of exploration and discovery of new stones and rocks, creatures and, if lucky, a ruby, mica and other gems, or so, I thought

Call someone – anyone – want to go for a bike ride? – borrowing my brother’s bikes –  out – into the wind, down Evelyn Place amid the sycamore trees – no hands, and sometimes eyes shut – feeling fearless – arms stretched out- wind on on my face and eyelashes –

Later – I discovered these were rare moments of grace – pre-teen – pre-race – when life was lived behind the veil – a child’s remembrance- a blank slate – life without black or white, poor or rich, a world to explore and plenty of time to play – a time that would soon not exist.

~ Anita Adams 6/2019

Shared Poem – 

A favorite poem – perhaps the first book of poetry I fell in love with – A Child’s Garden of Verses by Robert Louis Stevenson – my favorite poem is this –

The Flowers

Gardener’s garters, Shepherd’s purse,

Bachelor’s buttons, Lady’s smock,

And the Lady Hollyhock.

Fairy places, fairy things,

Fairy woods where the wild bee wings,

Tiny trees for tiny dames –

These must all be fairy names!

Tiny woods below whose boughs

Shady fairies weave a house;

Tiny treetops, rose or thyme,

Where the braver fairies climb!

Fair are grown-up people’s trees,

But the fairest woods are these;

Where, if I were not so tall,

I should live for good and all.

~ Robert Louis Stevenson (late 1800’s)

September Walk by Anita Adams NC Trees Photography

Wildflowers in Spring. Photo: Anita Adams NC Trees Photography

‘Simple Flower’ by NC Trees Photography

Delicate Wildflower