Soap Box

If you're sitting on my upstairs porch in the summertime, and you catch the full moon at just the right phase, it bathes the whole valley in a kind of buttery luminescence and lengthens the shadow of the trees and sets off that lovesick whippoorwill that lives in the little clump of hardwoods and he pours out his heart to anybody or anything blessed enough to be in earshot.

The big pond at the bottom of the hill reflects and ripples in the glow and sometimes there's a high up timid breeze that whispers through the tops of the tall oaks beside the house and fireflies make little green dots across the lawn and the bushes in the front yard.

Then the evening concert starts tuning up. A multitude of katydids all rising and falling together, with the tree frogs providing an angry counterpoint, the rhythmic clop of a shod horse crossing the patch of cement in front of the barn and the big bullfrog on the shallow side of the pond starts fattening up the bottom end.

The soft nickering of one of the new colts in the back paddock and the persistent bawl of a young calf looking for it's mother completes the ensemble and the symphony plays on as all the night critters do what they were born to do and praise their Creator.

Sometimes a sudden west wind will blow in a shower and the sound of hard rain on a tin roof takes me back to other front porches in other times when my step was a little quicker and the world seemed so much less complicated.

Then the shower passes, the moon comes back out and the evening symphony takes up right where it left off to be joined by a chorus of dripping leaves and water trickling down the hill.

The lights of our neighbors twinkle on a far away rise and the headlights of the occasional car crawls across the distant hills and a plane miles up in the night sky silently floats across the horizon on it's way to who knows where.

Nothing grandiose or glamorous or sophisticated or cool about sitting on the porch of a log house built between two patches of woods way out on a rural route, watching and listening as the night sights and the night sounds unfold around you.

Nothing earthshaking or innovative about getting up before the sun does and watching the rosy glow in the eastern sky grow fire red and turn the heavy dew in the front pasture into a solid field of little diamonds.

Nothing noteworthy about sitting on the back of a good horse and moving cows from one pasture to another, or spending a couple of hours busting clays with a good shotgun, or having the right crappie bait in your tackle box, or watching an eight point white tail buck tearing out full speed across a field and clear a fence by a foot, or watching a new born colt stand up for the first time, or eating a homegrown tomato out of your own garden.

Simple, yes and probably dull and boring to some, but as for me, I wouldn't trade my place on the upstairs porch for an easy chair on the finest penthouse balcony, or the sound of my night critters for a front row ticket to the grandest concert ever.

Thank you Lord for letting my eyes behold the beauty of Your creation, my ears to hear the wonder of it's sounds and the heart and soul to love it so much.

What do you think?

Pray for our troops and the peace of Jerusalem.

God Bless America

Charlie Daniels​