Friday, November 11, 2016

Defiance a Poem by Patrica Cooper


If you think we are going away,   

We’re not.   

If you think we are going to be quiet,   

We’re not.   

If you think we are going to stop,   

We’re not.   

If you think we are giving up one gain,   

We’re not.   

You may wish us dead,   

We’re not.   


If you see us with dread,   

So what.   

If you see us as bleeding-hearts,   

So what.   

If you see us as liberal,   

So what.   

If you see us as radical,   

So what.   

If you see us as nasty people,   

So what.   


If you see us loving our earth,   

We do.   

If you see us as loving people different from us,   

We do.   

Even you.


Patrica F. Cooper, Elizabethton, Tennessee, November 11, 2016   


©All rights reserved   

Tuesday, July 12, 2016

She Tried to Visit A Poem


She came last night   

The color of chalk   

Her face   

Her body   

Her long flowing gown   

A veil covering her face   

I recognized her      

Smiled   

Glad to see her   
  
Jumping in my sleep   

Not scared   

Just startled      

She misunderstood   

Thinking I was scared   

Left as quick as a heartbeat   

Like a hummingbird   

Come back I cried   

She didn’t   

Gone   

Waking up   

Not knowing if it was real   

Or a dream   

Patrica F. Cooper Elizabethton, TN July 12th, 2016
© All Rights Reserved


Friday, March 4, 2016

Trashing Paradise, by Patrica F. Cooper


Anyone from anywhere in the world who visits eastern Tennessee remarks about how beautiful it is.  That is because it is stunningly beautiful.  We have mountains bordered by mountains in every direction.  We have large expanses of woods green in the summer and branches, creeks and rivers full of stones and boulders rounded by the eons.   

We have trout, deer, bears and a large assortment of smaller mammals and many types of birds including wild turkeys.  We have woods that flower in the spring with redbud, dogwood and other wonderful specimens.  Then, from summer through fall we have other flowering trees.  We have distinctive types of trees and plants many with medicinal uses.  We have wildflowers that will set your heart to beating with their color and shapes.   

We have all these things and almost to a person people are proud of their Appalachian heritage and the beauty of these hills and valleys.  There is, however, one thing that covers many of the roadsides, woods and streams that we cannot be proud of and that is trash.   

No one can make me understand why people litter to such a degree that we cannot enjoy any natural scene without the addition of Styrofoam, paper products, plastic of all varieties, cans, bottles, trash bags … sometimes even full of trash and the list goes on.   

How can people say they love and care about this place (and other places, too) when they actually use that place as a garbage dump?  If we are lucky enough to live in paradise then let us begin to treat it like paradise.  That just does not go for eastern Tennessee, but for every place where humans find themselves.  Deal?   

Patrica F. Cooper
Elizabethton, TN
February 4th, 2016

© All Rights Reserved 

Sunday, February 21, 2016

Lucky Dimples: Fiction, a Naomi Childers Story, by Patrica F. Cooper


Edgar and Naomi had gone to bed.  It was cold, but unlike many of their neighbors in Cold Lake, Tennessee they had a good heating system and a tight warm house.  They had just settled down to watch television hoping to lull each of them into the nightscape when the sirens started.

They lived right on the main highway and daily emergency vehicles passed their house with sirens wailing.  Every time they passed Naomi would stop and pray for the responders and for whomever they were responding to.  Her friend, Thelma, had taught her that while she lived in Kentucky.

One day during an Extension meeting when Thelma was speaking she stopped dead still in the middle of a sentence and bowed her head.  When she looked up she told the group that she lived in the flight path of the medical helicopter taking the most serious cases from their hospital to the regional hospital and every time the helicopter passed over her house she would stop and pray for the safety of the workers and for the person being transported.  Naomi vowed then and there to pray every time an emergency vehicle passed.  She was still doing it all these years later.

Naomi could generally tell how serious the situation was by the speed of the emergency vehicle and the number of vehicles.  Tonight the vehicles were flying and soon followed by more.  After seven vehicles went up two came speeding back down the roadway from the opposite direction.

She couldn’t keep herself from speculating about what was going on.  At first she thought it was a bad wreck on their road known to motorcyclists as the road with five-hundred curves.  Later she guessed a house fire as the responders kept coming.  She wondered where they found so many to come to their remote region near the pointy finger part of Tennessee.

When she lost count at twenty-five she knew that the situation was serious.  Maybe a murder.  Edgar even got up and went out on the porch to look.  When he came back in he said, “It looks like a high-speed nighttime parade.”

The next morning it made the news.  There stood her friend, Sheriff Matt Stephens, with whom she had solved the murder mystery that became known as “The Body in Cold Rock Creek.”  Stephens was recounting the events of the previous night.

Later, when Naomi called him he told her the story in greater detail.  He said that he had gone up Cold Rock Creek to see Deputy John Hill who had been sick.  “I was closest when the call came in.  The dispatcher said that a neighbor called reporting a man walking around his yard with a rifle cursing to high heaven.  It was on Springs Road.  When I rolled up there was nobody outside.  About that time Deputy Rogers got there with a new officer Missy Parker.  They stopped in the middle of the road and exited their vehicle.”

The sheriff continued, “Rogers said that he yelled to Parker, as she got out of the patrol car to get down.  Just then she turned and apparently opened her mouth to speak.  A shot rang out.  No warning just a shot.  Parker slumped to the ground.  Both Rogers and I ran to her and pulled her behind the car.
 
“I called for an ambulance which, as it turns out, was already on route.  The call went out, ‘Officer down.’  We were able to get Parker down the road to the ambulance and they escorted her to the airport where she was air-lifted to the regional hospital.  I don’t mind telling you, Naomi, I was scared.  We didn’t know how bad Parker was hurt.  It crossed my mind how young she was and just hired two weeks ago straight out of the academy.”

Stephens obviously sniffled and he cleared his throat before continuing.  “By that time the perp was shooting nonstop and had obviously changed weapons to an assault rifle.  We were pinned down, but some officers who got to the scene were able to get the neighbors out of their house to safety.  Every officer around, regardless of who they worked for sped to the scene.

“The shooting finally stopped.  We had not returned fire, because we couldn’t see anything to shoot at and we were unsure who else was in the mobile home where the perp had retreated.   By the time SWAT went in he was gone.  The back door was open.  At daylight we apprehended him hiding in a ditch.  He gave up peacefully.  “I understand Parker will be all right,” he said.  We hung up.

About a week later, Naomi went up to mountain to visit her friend Jen Barrows and they began talking about the incident.  “You know I go to church with Missy Parker,” Jen said.  “Knowed her all her life.  Sweet girl, pretty girl.  She has a big mouth.  Now, mind you, Naomi, I don’t mean she runs her mouth all the time.  I mean she has a large mouth and it was open when the shot rang out.  The bullet went through one cheek and because her mouth was wide open, and she had not spoken yet it went right through the one cheek and out the other missing her tongue and all of her teeth.”

“My word,” Naomi gasped.

“Yes, it was a miracle her mother told me.  As luck would have it when Missy got to the medical center there was a plastic surgeon who had admitted a patient who had a reaction to a medication she had been given when she was having her eyelids done in his office.  You know they have what are called ‘hospitalists’ now and a person’s real doctor isn’t supposed to come to the hospital, but this guy came anyway as a visitor to see his patient.”

Jen went on with her story, “Well, they were so overwhelmed with what to do when they saw Missy’s injuries that when this plastic surgeon was walking out through the emergency room  one of the doctors recognized him and asked him to come and look and tell them what to do.  Missy was conscious.  He looked at her and said, ‘Sweetie, this is your lucky day.  I can fix this.’

“Her mother said that the doctor said that she nodded.  Somehow,” Jen went on, “the hospital gave this doctor permission to operate so he did.

“Missy’s mother was in her room after the surgery and she said that the doctor told Missy that after all the swelling was down and the stitches were out that she was going to be even prettier than she was before she was shot. ‘Because,’ he said, ‘I gave you two of the deepest most beautiful dimples that ever was on any woman.’

“And, do you know what, Naomi?  That girl is a picture.  She was pretty before, but she could be a beauty queen now.”

The local paper did a feature article on Missy Parker with before and after pictures and by golly, Jen was right.  The young woman was a beauty.  The reporter asked Missy if she minded her new nickname Dimples.  “No,” Missy replied, “but my nickname for myself is Lucky Dimples.”

The reporter asked Deputy Parker if she was going to stay in law enforcement and if she was scared when she rolled up on a call?

“Yes,” Missy told her, “I am going to stay in law enforcement.”  She continued, “I am scared when I come onto the scene, but all cops are, or should be, but that is where your training takes over and why you are more alert.  Now, however, I steel myself and tell myself … Perp, you better watch out, because Lucky Dimples is here and you have me to deal with now.”  Then she smiled her deep dimples showing.

Patrica F. Cooper Elizabethton, TN February 21st, 2016
© All Rights Reserved




Saturday, February 20, 2016

Eagle Soar Non-fiction by Patrica F. Cooper


On the way home from the grocery store, at the stop light by the small airport down the road from the house I thought that I had lost my mind.  Again.  I saw what I thought was an eagle in flight. 
  
I told Ed about it, but I thought I must have been mistaken.  Sure, we live in the midst of a national forest in a land so wild that the song birds don’t even know to get the seeds from the bird feeder.

There is a university camera set up watching two eagles nest about sixty miles from us, but there were no reports of an eagle or pair nearby.   

Then, this morning in the newspaper were two pictures of an eagle.  One in a tree and another of one in flight near the airport on Thursday.  Someone captured the picture of the eagle I saw as it flew across and over the road right when I saw it.   

How about that for a coincidence?  I actually saw an eagle soar not five miles down the road from where we live.  I hope that eagle finds a mate and decides to set up housekeeping, hopefully in our woods on our creek in a tree right next to where our blue heron lives most of the time.

Patrica F. Cooper, Elizabethton, TN February 20th, 2016   

© All Rights Reserved   

Tuesday, January 5, 2016

The Meat of the Matter


Good news … the US Congress and the President signed a budget agreement.  The bad news is at   least one item in the budget is devastating for American consumers who want to know the origins of   their red meat (including pork).   

Now, the US may NOT put individual labels on its meat stating where the animal was born, raised or slaughtered.  The US lost their appeals in front of the World Trade Organization (WTO) and faced massive retaliation if they did not stop the practice of individual package labeling of meat.   

I am livid.  I want to know where my meat comes from.  I demand to know!  Today, I wrote to my two US Senators and my US Representative asking if there would be any laws broken if the food stores advertised where they get their meat?  Not putting on individual package labels, but just as a store or company policy telling us the place of birth, growth and slaughter of their meat products.   

With food safety becoming a greater threat all of the time, I think we consumers deserve to know the origins of our foods.  If, I hear from these representatives, I will let you know what they say.   

In the meantime, I plan to seek out a local slaughter house with a butcher shop so that I can know where the meat I plan to serve my family comes from.   

I additionally also want to know where the fruits and vegetables come from and I want to know every ingredient in packaged foods.  So, I guess, that I am truly becoming a fan of “eat and grow local.”   

What are your opinions on these matters?   

© Patrica F. Cooper, Elizabethton, TN January 5th, 2016   
All rights reserved