They have sheep out at Warren Wilson these days. There is even a donkey. Maybe it’s a mule, but it doesn’t look that big to me. Why the donkey is hanging out with the sheep I do not know. Throw in a couple from up around Banner Elk and a few wise guys from NC State and you’d have quite a scene. Hopefully not the scene that they have going on down at Old Fort, where somebody wiped out the Holy Family and a good amount of plaster livestock when he choked on a potato chip while driving his truck.
No, we go for a quieter Advent in the lower Swannanoa Valley. The college kids have all gone home to places not bifurcated by gerrymandered precincts. In their wake are lowing cattle and convalescents. As I walked around the farm and campus, I felt gratitude f the XL Shut-In finisher’s shirt I found at the Goodwill. The shirt I received at the finish is now to small for me to wear, owing to this year’s trials with a maladjusted L5/S1 disk. Unconsionably common, this maladjustment is. As is reaching a stage in life where walking constitutes exercise.
It’s all very humbling, and there’s no better soundtrack for quiet humiliation than Lyle Lovette. I would like to propose, in fact, that we make Brother Lyle the poet laureate of this year’s Advent season. The theme of the season so far seems to be vulnerability. As far as I can tell, Brother Lyle is the best at being vulnerable to the darkness without being consumed by it. No easy task, especially not in the last couple of days.