1
That's the mark of true friends. That we might not see each other for a year but when we do it's as if we were never apart.Jane Green
2
Every nation must have prayerful men and women to intercede for the country’s well-being.Lailah Gifty Akita
3
I go from flying to drowning as I slide down the soul-deadening slippery slope I realize I’m on. I can’t breathe, can’t talk, suddenly realizing I’m an imposter. I’ve crossed the line. Wronged my girl. And in that few seconds of thought I feel fate strong-arm me, forcing me to turn and walk away like a helpless idiot needing to be put out of his misery.A.Wilding Wells
4
Why does no one speak of the cultural advantages of the country? For example, is a well groomed, ecologically kept, sustainably fertile farm any less cultural, any less artful, than paintings of fat angels on church ceilings?Gene Logsdon
5
The fresh and crisp air of the country reminds us that our blood surges from of the natural world and how tied we are to the sprung rhythms of earth and sky, weather and season.Kilroy J. Oldster
6
Warm familiar scents drift softly from the oven, And imprint forever upon our hearts That this is homeand that we are loved.Arlene StaffordWilson
7
Little girl, little boy If love has a way Fill their fields with laughter And scatter the sun on their day And if it should happen to rain Make their raindrops kisses Straight from heaven above That touch their hands and faces And that fill them with love And make the moon reflect their smiles And their stars plenty And, above all, keep them together And hold them as you may Forever and ever Until their last day.Unknown
8
I’ll save a spot for you on the hood of my truck.Unknown
9
Because I see A rainstorm in JuneJust before the sun The black of night Just before the stars And, girl, I see your ghost Just before our dawnUnknown
10
We live, all of us, in sprung rhythm. Even in cities, folk stir without knowing it to the surge in the blood that is the surge and urgency of season. In being born, we have taken seisin of the natural world, and as ever, it is the land which owns us, not we, the land. Even in the countryside, we dwell suspended between the rhythms of earth and season, weather and sky, and those imposed by metropolitan clocks, at home and abroad. When does the year begin? No; ask rather, When does it not? For us — all of us — as much as for Mr Eliot, midwinter spring is its own season; for all of us, if we but see it, our world is as full of time-coulisses as was Thomas Mann’s.Countrymen know this, with the instinct they share with their beasts. Writers want to know it also, and to articulate what the countryman knows and cannot, perhaps, express to those who sense but do not know, immured in sad conurbations, rootless amidst Betjeman’s frightful vision of soot and stone, worker’s flats and communal canteens, where it is the boast of pride that a man doesn’t let the grass grow under his feet. As both countryman and writer, I have a curious relationship to time. .G.M.W. Wemyss
11
Being in the country is like being in a dream–one doesn't quite know who one is. There is an anonymity to it all–that strange human creature that is me, one among all.Meia Geddes