Secure in the Velvet Ditch
It was just before dusk. The sun was a neon circle in the sky, its light slanting lean and low. I was passing along an unpaved road in northern Lafayette County when I discovered the velvet ditch. My tires smattered the dusty peach stones of the road while the day’s rays hazed a tangerine dream down through the air. I turned a bend to see the street carved into a hill. Six feet high on either side of my small car the dirt curved like a cliff, rising in a mineral-rich rusty tan, as if the blood from our brothers’ and sisters’ toil had faded into the soil. Those swoops of sod encircled soft and sweet like arms embracing me. With the sunset hue from above, the peach fuzz from below, and the coral and apricot around I was nestled in a cozy orange cocoon. The mound of earth was a badger’s burrow engulfing me with a warmth as inviting as velvet. Were I to stop and exit my vehicle there was no way to climb up and out to stand above the ditch dug into the dirt. But I wouldn’t want to. I wouldn’t want to leave the safe serenity I found wrapped in the peace of the velvet ditch.
This article was published in The Local Voice #154 (April 19-May 3, 2012)…Click here to download the PDF of issue #154.
