Scraps From The Rag-Bag

The iconic elm. Looking east toward Brandon Gap in the distance.

10 p.m. on Saturday evening and I'm out with my little flashlight, stomping through the winter-tangled grass of the west meadow, calling Robert-cat. 

J. and I took turns poking our heads out the door, trilling his name in winsome tones; it is clearly one of the too frequent nights when Robert feels the urge to patrol the acreage, willfully deaf to our entreaties, preferring to roam the edges of the wooded ravines. It is 50 degrees and a restless wind hums through the bare trees.

Two nights ago the full moon was obscured by heavy fog; now as I stand still, face raised to the sky, clouds shred and part revealing the waning gibbous moon seeming to float above the barn roof.

Words drop into my mind:

"The moon was a ghostly galleon, tossed upon cloudy seas."

How long since I have thought of the romantic Alfred Noyes poem, "The Highway Man" let alone read it?

 

Ross-Lewis home. Elm Row Farm.

I am of an age to remember that grandmotherly farm women kept a ragbag, sections of fabric torn from old shirts or faded aprons, useful for mopping up a spill or polishing the parlor furniture, sturdy chunks of chambray that might be needed to patch the three-cornered tear in a man's work shirt. 

Grandma Eliza's ragbag lived in the tidy kitchen closet that also housed brooms, dustmop, tins of stove polish and furniture polish on a shelf, the mop bucket with its wringer, a feather duster. 

I've always had what I think of as a 'ragbag mind,' a head stuffed to distressing capacity with words and phrases, sentences from books read years ago, mental pictures, remembered conversations, overheard snippets of opinions, melodies, names, vignettes, old joys and sorrows.

None of this 'stuff' is stored in orderly mental files or neatly labeled cubbies, nor is any of it stashed in chronological order.

Grandson D. chuckling affectionately, tells me, 'Meme, when you die, a lot of useless information will go with you!'

Inspired to tweak some potentially useful bit from the pile I am pummeled by a cascade of discordant rubble that resists being shoved back in place.

As a life-long insomniac, it follows that this endless collection of trivia unfolds its disjointed segments during the wee hours when I would prefer to be sleeping.

Is this a common affliction? Perhaps it is reserved for those of us who have become by default or by nature the keeper of family memories and sagas, the ones who noticed seemingly inconsequential details. 

Perhaps those of us with cluttered minds are the proverbial 'flies on the wall' not quite in the thick of things, but ever alert to the inter-weaving of colors, scents, voices, atmospheres, taking it all in, storing it, never knowing what will turn up later to trouble or delight us.

Wilder Hill

Willis-cat trudged after me in the damp grass, eyes gleaming whenever I turned to scan the the lane with my flashlight. Rounding the back of the house, stepping into the glare of the porch light and motion light activated on the side of the barn, I noted Robert sitting on the damp bricks of the landing. At my approach he tossed his head, sauntered down the drive. 

Jim poked his head out the door and stated crossly, 'He showed up right after you headed down back. He doesn't choose to come in. If that's the way he wants it he can stay out all night!'

I took a few casual steps in Robert's direction. In a flash he had disappeared behind the barn.

The wind was coming up. The galleon moon slid behind a tossing sea of inky clouds. 

I went to bed thinking of the highway man riding the road that looped like 'a ribbon of moonlight, over the purple moor'--and of so many other things.

The wind thrummed and whined against my west window, the red numerals on my clock moved me through the night hours; sleepless, I resigned myself to turning over the scraps tumbling from my ragbag mind.

And still of a winter's night, they say, when the wind is in the trees,

When the moon is a ghostly galleon tossed upon cloudy seas,

When the road is a ribbon of moonlight over the purple moor,

A highwayman comes riding,

Riding-riding

A highwayman comes riding, up to the old inn-door. 

[Stanza X from 'The Highwayman by Alfred Noyes]