Grandfather's Workshop IV

Grandfather's work went by many names,
And had existed through the course of human history
In every culture.

He crafted poultices, herbal medicine, and home remedies.
And for the truly desperate,
charms and potions.

Dealing with a particularly feisty old biddy, he could only quickly nod in my direction while barking out orders to cousin Angeline, who
stood behind the counter grinding compounds in a mortar-and-pestle.

Grandmother's voice could be heard in the back.

I watched as Angeline tipped the contents into an apothecary's scale, and then satisfied,
made neat packets with mummy paper and string for the old lady to take home.

From the pickling jar labeled, 'Baby Mice', I knew they were making arthritis medicine.

Grandfather's Workshop III

The bell above the door sang out,
like the harness to a horse-drawn sleigh.

And always the smell, the pungeance of it,
of dust and old books, and eucalyptus.

Candles in sconces stood along the walls,
distracting, for the moment, with their glare
and confusion.

Why candles, visitors would ask him? But I knew.
He thought they gave the right atmosphere for his work.

The candles,
and the heavy wood paneling
and the rows and rows of glass jars and display cases
filled with mysterious contents most people would never
come to know.

Grandfather was a fascinator.

Grandfather's Workshop II

And then, for no reason at all, my grandfather popped to mind.

I recalled that day I visited him where he worked, down by the market square. It lay in the old town where some of the streets were still paved with cobbletones. Some said they'd been laid down hundreds of years ago and when I was a boy I thought they were skulls stuck in the ground. I never could pry one up though, to confirm my suspicions.

The walk to the shop meant that I had to cross the tumbledowns, acres and acres of fallen brick and mortar and gap toothed windowsills. And then, when I turned the corner on Holy John street, there it was. Grandfather's workshop. Just as tidy and ordered a place as a man could hope to have in those times. Whitewashed, it shone like a beacon and stood out like a nail in a two by four.

It reminded me of church.

Grandfather's Workshop I

I wake up in the Void...

Not mere blackness, as in the absence of light.
Not just pitch, as if my optic nerves had been deprived
of the sensory input of light but,
the true Nothingness.

Slowly, I realize I have thoughts.
"I am at the begining," I think. But something had come before.

I remembered plummeting, and I fell a long & shadowed way. I had fallen, first. Then I remembered rising, soaring, so that my heart felt near to bursting with the sublime.

And finally, I leveled in-between.