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About an excellent woman.

“You have to play with care”
Her voice whispers
In the silence I hear her
It’s just a game of solitaire
But the words of her wisdom I still hear
She advises me to watch carefully
And to play every card
To have no fear
Take big chances
Just worry about the sequence
Not the match of the color
I wonder if she really knew
Just what she was teaching me?

I recall:

One day
It was SO HOT

Now, remember- I lived in the country

We were in her henhouse. Merle and me.

Checking for eggs.

Merle could sure wrangle some chickens. I remember one time-
One of her hens stopped laying eggs.

She was explaining it all to me. She had been out to gather eggs
Every day as usual. The hen had been barren for almost a week.

That particular day,
It was the afternoon,

Merle grabbed that hen from her nest
And with the squawking fowl before her
(Of course at arm’s length)
She marched that bird out to the horses’ trough
And she plunged ‘Ms. Hen’s’ head right in
Held her down for a full minute
Chicken was protesting
Water splashing furiously
Loud cackling mixed within the sound
Of the actual experience of the nothing
That could be ‘madder than a wet hen’
In all of it’s glorious illustration
And, now, as I remember-

I have to ask:
“wasn’t I lucky?”

“That will shock her into production”
Merle explained

I was probably only 8
But I sure do remember

And back to the matter at hand
On that HOT day-

One of those hens laid this odd egg

It had no shell
Just soft membrane with nothing to protect it
Even from the most delicate prod

That it was found intact was impressive
And impossible

That the hen itself did not rupture it
Upon it’s passage forth into the nest
In the presence of the ‘oeuf’
One would wonder how it could possibly be

Merle showed it to her husband
And she showed it to the neighbors

After she showed it to me

And when she was done
In that blisteringly hot sun

She bet me a quarter that it was so hot
That if she layed that egg
Up on her tractor

It would fry that egg
So- she did
And it did

And I lost that quarter

She taught me how to play poker
(Even ‘High Chicago’ and ‘Low Las Vegas’)
Took me to ‘Bingo’
Teached me how to cook
Make a “Tom Collins”
Grow a garden
Break a colt
Never judged me
And she was always there
And as I grew older
I looked in retrospect at the way she lived
And I tried to emulate that

I sure do miss her