I forgot
How thunder echoed
Those ripples
Like shudders
How the sound seemed square
Like a box closing down
How it made me remember
Being young in a valley
Between soft-shouldered mountains
Where on Sundays
Religious music played on early mornings
Rock of Ages and blessings to the departed
Men with West Virginia accents, voices gentle spoke
Like the soft wind and goldfinches
—
Thunder rumbles around me
As it hasn’t in years
I welcome the sound
The way we do for something long lost and memorable
Cleanse our spirit
Find our souls
Angels bowling
Hold me close
Sascha Darlington
Beautiful. I was raised Protestant, more or less Evangelical and the Gospel hymns of the South have a beauty all their own. Now that I’m Catholic and bad religious music has infiltrated The Mass, I have a special respect for the simple piety of these hymns,
On Sundays when I was a kid in the mountains of West Virginia (no TV) it was the only possible music to hear in the morning. I don’t think I’m religiously affiliated any more but that music feels as if it has gone to the bone.
Kind of wistful and nostalgic, and quirky with that friendly thunder. The picture of a past where everything made sense. Good work, Sascha.
Thank you, Steve. Yeah. An amazing world when you’re a little kid. We had no tv and the only radio played religious music early on Sundays. A whole nother world, except I guess it still exists in some places here.
My pleasure, Sascha. Interesting … our childhood forms us apparently, but we change so much. Most of us, anyway.