Gatherer of Blood

       Humans love food. Ever have a baptism, wedding or funeral without serving something to eat? Food is a universal pleasure, like sex, however, to socially interact through sexual means is considered taboo: to socially interact through food is always acceptable. Certain cultural traditions in relation to food can be disgustingly unfamiliar to the uninitiated, especially if the main ingredient is blood.

      Blood equates life. Where there is or was blood, there is or was life. Farms, those more and more unfamiliar cohabitations of animals and people are sensual mystical places. Farmyard mornings in particular induce a primal magic, as pink purple sunrise hues perform on bedroom walls an bodies, comfortable under covers, melt and mesh into the fabric, like soft butter spread over warm toast. Impossible to move forth from the nights cocooning. Impossible to break the magic spell. Crisp sweet morning air seeps in from a slightly open window, carrying forth farmyard sounds an smells. Intelligent rooster heralds every break of dawn his er-errr-er-rooouuuuu grates and irritates neurons, erasing all good night feelings: cows less intelligent, but more knowledgeable, prefer to usher in a gentler awakening, lulling us from our beds with rythmatic  mawing’s and moaning’s. They know how to carry a morning song. I marvel at spring’s magic as I rise, gazing out the window pane. Red maple stands lofty by the windows side, boasting burgeoning buds. Dawn breezes dance with dazzling sun faced daffodils. Earth smells come to enchant me, pungent, musty, spicy concoctions that hand onto nostril hairs without excuses. Spring on the farm smell equally of life and death.

       The season of blood gathering, spring. Today is the day. Father stands tall in the dooryard his six foot Scottish-Irish-German- English frame nearly gigantic. His calloused weathered hands can hold an entire new born foal gently cradled between them, or, can wrench a hens neck with one swift move. I have seen both feats preformed. Today tradition is being fashioned and requires traditional trappings. Father’s hand employs the referred weapon of death, an RWI musket once belonging to Great Great Grandfather Baeurmeister. My eldest brother, Allan, wields the pig sticking knife that glistens in the daybreak sun like a Druids sickle. Obscure in the overhanging shadows my youngest brother waits with tethering ropes. Rarely does any living being go willingly to its death. There are always hesitations. With blood red lips gracefully smiling, Mother, deep in nostalgic ponderance holds ruddy clay buckets for collecting, the same clay buckets the Lagace Migniers would have used in Rivere Ouelle. Rich in tradition, the cyclic rituals of life and death are passed on from generation to generation, appeasing human nature.