A Deep River Year - 2017

This weekend is the annual Flea Market on the big field in front of the Congregational Church on Main Street. It seems to get bigger each year, and I expect over eighty dealers hoping to entice someone to buy their wares. There will be antiques and artwork, home grown tomatoes and blimp-sized zucchinis, toys and tools, furniture and fancy hats, and every other imaginable kind of attic or basement treasure. And nearby will be a huge rummage sale--mismatched dishes, Christmas decorations, waffle irons, jewelry and linens, even old LPs that once were the wonderful background music to someone's beautiful life. I look forward to this adventure every year, though I cringe at the idea of trying to put a price tag on all that stuff. And I cringe even more to think about disposing of the mountains of unwanted and unpurchased stuff that will be left over.

But what possibilities there are! Over the years I have acquired true treasures. There is the old metal cowbell with a bullet hole in it, and the garden sculpture of a flying pig that I could not pass by. I cherish my hand scythe, rusted with a wooden handle, that I still use to chop down brush and weeds. And I was delighted and amazed to find a commemorative plate bearing the image of a hitch-hiking angel carrying a suitcase. Perhaps my favorite acquisition was a large painting of a skunk on black velvet, which has never appeared on any of the walls of our home. I admire it still, stacked in a corner with other prizes that have no place to be displayed. All of these things are the leftover remnants of someone's life. They remind me of the impermanence of our little journeys, which nonetheless are filled with joy, laughter, sweet labor, wondrous love, and black velvet skunks.

Rummage Sale Ring

In a pile of forgotten jewelry,
she reaches for a delicate ring,
its silver setting old and graceful--
but with only an empty space
where once a shining diamond
or a sparkling sapphire
may have graced a woman's hand.
It is a forgotten remnant
left buried amid the debris
of bygone years,
an object lost among the castaways
of used and useless souvenirs
that once compiled a thousand lives.
Perhaps this small ring
was given on a bended knee,
held out by a trembling hand
for love's sweet sake.
Or worn through age and absence,
kept for a grandchild
that never came.
Or passed from one to another,
through years and generations,
through joy and pain,
through hurt and tears,
until the stone fell out,
waiting, waiting to be worn again.
All of it, all of it,
once held and kept and treasured,
says life is so short,
and things are only things,
but still,
beloved things.

--Timothy Haut