Longfellow’s Tale

Copyright © 2014 new.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means,

graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by

any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author

except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

WestBow Press

A Division of Thomas Nelson & Zondervan

1663 Liberty Drive

Bloomington, IN 47403

www.westbowpress.com

1 (866) 928-1240

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in

this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views

expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the

views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Scripture taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982

by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models,

and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

ISBN: 978-1-4908-3497-9 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4908-3498-6 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2014907660

WestBow Press rev. date:  06/30/2020

CONTENTS

Dedication

Foreword

Preface: Surfacing A Storm

Chapter 1     Season With The Sun

Chapter 2     Well Warn Wood

Chapter 3     A Trail Away

Chapter 4     Disguise Is Falling

Chapter 5     What Is The World

Chapter 6     Who Is Your Father

Chapter 7     Hurry Up —Yahweh’s Waiting

Chapter 8     Summer Shiner

Chapter 9     The See Of Shame

Chapter 10   No Ware To Hide

Chapter 11   Trial and Terror

Chapter 12   Show of Hands

Chapter 13   Yielding For Wings

Chapter 14   Sparkle Is Light

Chapter 15   Labor of Law

Chapter 16   Heavy Lifting

Chapter 17   Time To Glow

Chapter 18   To His Side –Come!

Appending Acknowlegement

About The Testator

DEDICATION

Col 4 : 2-5

Matt 13 : 16-17

This story was dedicated to a son but is also right for a daughter. A request for an animated bedtime story profiled a key which opened the door to a fertile imagination. Jesus entered there and tilled a tale. He sowed merciful narrative to spiritually hail. That was many, many years ago. His muster seed grew!

The summons to sew some simple lore to mystical, majesty metaphor came from the Master Designer. Though my fabric was plain, God’s needle proved profound. The result was embroidery with stitched in sound! Read the vivid story with childish perspect, then repeat and heed scripture to mature connect. Humility and pride decipher divide. Stitching looks best when His so is topside.

The Bible has answers for wandering souls who long for more than what the world contemporaries. There are 2 places. To one will you go. Ever expectant, our Father is patient. He wants us to come home. All of us! It’s not too late to heed His bide. Read this tale in the early of a morning. His current will suffice to predestine your sojourning.

FOREWORD

Dan 4 : 2-3

This is a book I never planned,

As the One who inspired it, led a pen in my hand!

Though a wilderness it seemed to compose spiritly,

I revised a child’s telling by desiring His free.

A sparrow, an owl, and a masked raccoon,

A branch that broke, a harvest moon,

A weasel, a robin, a wily, scarred rat,

A cornfield with its farmer played a part in that.

Roles were unknown, but by rote, found their page,

An ending was termed when I AM tallied wage.

A branch played the crux between evil and good.

The Lord refined brittle with savant hardwood.

Within His words is a humble for us all.

Pride goads a stumble. It occasions a fall.

But all is not lost, for a prayer clears a way.

Someone’s always lifting, even unto this day!

God governs life like no other can,

This tale written boldly was tailored by His plan.

It’s a surfacing to savor like a poem that’s read,

Where the threads are dancing and merging in your head.

What Maker gave my hammer a tree?

To house a reader, far from evil’s debris!

The One who twirls! His truth will be told.

To the lost and the captive in a world growing cold!

Dan 4 : 10-12

PREFACE: SURFACING A STORM

A fourth son of six, before spring, did arrive. Born unto the world, an eighth newborn cried. Five infants more did adjourn a large tribe, but twelve summed the total, because one sister died. Fourteen finalized a family headcount. Distinguish was cloistered by a multitude amount.

Now this lad grew up in an adequate place, but with limited, individual personification. Intimate distribution was dispensed by institution —allotment inferred like personnel feed. Order was implicit, compliance enforced, complaint not tolerated, and rebel always quelled.

When a seventh date arrived, a small boy awoke! On that Genesis day, he was morning-star stoked! Happiness came with eager expectation for an annual receiving exhilaration. He loved the number seven, twas a perfect choice. It chartered his embark on an ultimate rejoice!

He opened a wonderful, powerful present. A weapon with a spring that propelled a cupped dart! Also, he received a brown, wound-up hare that moved upon a surface flat. Aiming with precision affixed ammo to prey. He practiced target warfare. It preempted his play.

Though his hometown was little, outdoor hunting was restricted. First years of public teaching expanded that constricted. Children his age were studiously met. They resided outside the wiry weave with a closed metal gate that bordered his estate. Immersion in variation delighted an eager ear.

First love engulfed a childhood heart near the ending of third grade. He sighted a fair maiden who giggled accolade. On a fortuitous day, another boy was disapproved, and a shy, smitten lad was instructed to be moved. His forwarded seating —in front of the damsel!

The beauteous beheld a bewildered face. Her countenance flirted with exquisite grace. It was lovely so intended, he thought lack forever ended! But disruption evolved, quite beyond young contend.

His father approached before his school’s last day. An anticipated morrow of jubilant games receded with alert about moving afar. When paternal departed, realization hit him hard. The smiling, sweet girl with long lashed eyes might never know, he sorrowfully cried.

And to the west, he was driven where labor was requisite. Cattle replaced classmates, and roosters played the bullies. The unpopulated landscape with fields of sowed foliage were hemmed by squared stones strung with thorns all around. Furrowed terrain and pastured domain dominated agriculture’s pertain. As was wont for his age, he adapted to rustic ways.

Activity, of the sort that once playful’d his day, was replaced by laborious on hot and cold days. Repeating manual chores was the daily routine here. As there was no other venue, and compliance still prevailed, duty was exacted to earn family wage. Room and board did not grow on trees! Barnyards and crops demanded tending to mainstay.

Public edit continued in a schoolyard depleted. With no other males in small classrooms to tussle with, a sibling and he simulated team sports. His dormant social calendar only featured empty spaces.

After the eighth grade, he encountered private preaching. He enrolled at a prep school which gnashed harsh speaking. A scratched chalkboard was reserved that employed his number one! This hardened a situation for the daydreaming scholar, for his father taught business with an ironed, starched collar.

Discipline at this boy school was complicit with reprove and wasn’t much liked by young men disapproved. Feelings aren’t spared where freshmen jeer affray. As a runt, he heard rant in their harsh, rancid bray.

When he heard classmates talk, his father being mocked, hostile hateful battered his ear! But the boys jeered him not —no one knew the timid deer! He rehearsed unrelated, indeed, he shrunk alone. Though he averted the slur of parochial burr, rough ricochet from ridicule did grieve the feeler cruel.

With the natural insulation of rural abode, urbane inclusion didn’t sub-verb erode. The reclusion assured exclusion from peer infusion he heard not. The company of his brethren purported interaction. An emergence of adolescence had media to skew that, primarily on a screen with commercial format.

Though his finals from that privy were adequate for college, no counselor consulted higher climbing to him. He declined to service country like two brothers before him, as that meant more bondage with shorn, cropped hair! 18 years of no choice about that was enough!

Maternal optioned trade school, and that consign transpired. Ignorance corroborated his reticent voice. Uncertainty coagulated dissenting noise. Submission type-casted and indentured his poise.

The first night afar, he wept before he slept. Though the young man knew not what a wall contained, he dreaded the margins they duly pertained. Hammering was taught as if it was his lot! That pounding, plain plot daily dinged his dreadnought!

Outside the building where framing was live, he found himself cringing in order to survive. He shunned vulgar speaking often spoken to impress. Especially when mingling, baneful words sounded less. Conscience discouraged embarrassment to train.

Obediently, he endured the term of one year, before moving farther west to smog-smacked hills. They towered far beyond a flat-abiding farm. For ten lean years he watched others social, while his stunted convivial pathetically paled. Labored jobs often started were routinely bailed.

He met an ally whose singing was sordid, gentile humored with scandalous morbid. Though agnostic was his belief, he extended friendship well.

One evening, in the peril of lonesome regret, trapped in dour dull at the end of a dark day, discouragement dampened personal with gray. It was then, that he heard a song so unlike every other melody a certain soul singer sang. The somber tune stirred an empathetic spirit. He imagined and observed a black man falling wounded.

He paused that mortal image and felt loss undulate throe. He touched the hunted man dying cold in the ghetto and shuddered when the victim gasped a murdered, last libretto.

He sought out a pen and commissioned lined paper. While he wrote, Elvis flowed. The poem worked like balm to salve a sore qualm. Though after he finished, disquiet resumed.

Meandering wanders ultimately end. A rare phone call announced an imminent bend. Cancer smoldered within his sire, inexorably spreading a deathly dire. Worry etched homeless like graffiti in his head. He packed up house holdings, including his bed!

He really was tired of noisy, city life. With no invitation, he left vacant behind, terrified of losing what is lost when undermined.

Surprise and nerves greeted an arrival. Succession was difficult for the stern man he knew. Cooperative became contentious as separation time stalked near. The toiler’s hand strived to revive old mishap. And though he tried to please, he failed to appease. He retreated awkwardly to an older sister’s unease.

Disease didn’t care and continued to destroy. About a month after leaving, maternal called. He consented to come and preside again. His father passed away afore his special day, interred one day after in a coffin to stay. A birthday twas abutted by death and decay!

Some papers were sketched, so his mother possessed, though she saw all the land as a burdensome quest. Farming was worrisome, and drought wearied her heart. But her fear was lessened by a son to strive that.

He labored hard to rebuild a tattered farm. As time progressed, and while a lawyer digressed, he attended a university to secure summers off.

An assignment to expound on human hate presented an opportunity to expose unjust fate. An admired social teacher read a poem tucked within. On the essay returned, a note was clasped, and to her office, a hider was summoned.

He paused outside, apprehensive about unknown, until all else had left, to walk in alone. From the exposed insertion, she discerned a guarded gift. She understood and admired the verses of vivid art. It was the first time a Rose ever honored his heart.

On some holidays, kin would visit, and with questions, politely ask. A few glances were passed, for vague answers he tasked. An occupation some perceived he revised for lax comfort, predicated a shift from support to resent.

He met nearby Protestants, and they cheered him a lot. They enjoyed his brief visits and encouraged brighter thought. The wife arranged a luncheon with someone he’d later greet. The neighbor’s sly invite preceded a college meet!

This was a matter he kept quiet to avoid smatter. But this squatter, who prior eased caring minds for tending mother, was discovered to have friended a verboten mismatch! His mother glowered, and he knew full well. Catholic condemnation would deem her an infidel.

He labored still harder before the lawyer late called, but the farm, alas, was for another not galled. Almost two years aft arriving, contract papers were presented. The litigator offered liability as if good, though the snag in his snare baited lackluster earn. The litigant heard debit in the attorney’s engage. His signature did not ligature an indifferent, lawyer’s page.

The mother fumed at her foolish son, and she scorned his dissenting impersonation. Thoroughly distraught, he meekly informed her that he would desert. He consigned a drab apartment to store his only things. More conversation was not ventured or tendered aft that day. Nothing else was necessary to keep family away. Static was prevalent, quite cooperatively attained.

The prodigal son conversed with his friend, though her marriage retained a seldom-seen man. Perhaps their attraction was shared disarray in a world that consumed with so little repay. The farm was sold. His childhood was gone.

He continued with collegiate, some evenings, called her late. Occasionally their paths crossed with a visual update. Then he visited this woman and observed her offspring. She was a mother with three small children. Loving nurture was evident and generously dispersed. Consummate love dazzled his whole. It was like affection playing keynotes to a man raised on sole.

A divorce came to be, and that founder made him fonder. But flourish didn’t ripen in the days that