Flying Island

        The House of Juliet           Juliet V. Strauss 1863-1918 “Strauss not only advised her readers to find beauty  and spirituality in their own lives, but she fought to protect  it in her own life through her successful effort to preserve Turkey Run’s grandeur.”      —Ray E. Boomhower, The Country Contributor:          The Life and Times of Juliet V. Strauss In Ladies’ Home Journal , I extolled  the unsung pleasure of rolling out a cobbler crust  or pulling sun-dried laundry from the line.  But my heart’s domicile   was the wilderness near Rockville, where as a child I turned handsprings on canyon floors and shimmied up sandstone walls  to lichen-covered cliffs fringed by ferns.  Papa praised my questing spirit, and when he died, a young man,  with hands gnarled from carpentry,  the wind i...

The Farm Wife, a poem by Shari Wagner The farm wife describes meeting her husband at a “walk-a-mile”—a Mennonite dating game The last light was touching the tassels when the quiet boy from Emma Church tapped the guy with his eye on college and told him to move forward five couples. That’s how I met Pete. From the soft way he scuffed the gravel and whistled to a red-winged blackbird, I could tell he wasn’t the sort to shoot the starlings or tell me how to keep my house. Not like the boys who talked to be talking and walked so close they almost pushed me in the ditch. When Lu Miller told me, “ Move back nine,” I did with regret but tagged her back when the next girl said, “ Go forward four,” and I added five. It was cheating, but that’s how you knew someone liked you—when they came back. At Fly Creek, cicadas were clicking and swallows brushed the darkness with their wings. Or maybe they were bats. ...