Beyond the Black Gate Vol. II

By Anita Sutherland Gardner and James Gardner

Shortly after Jim and Anita married, they moved to a small thirty-acre primitive plot in Parke County, Indiana, known as the Covered Bridge Capital of America.

To gain entrance to this property, you had to pass through the only structure on the property, a black wooded farm gate. It was beyond this black gate that Jim and Anita started their journey in life.

This journey was like many other folks, experiences filled with hopes, dreams, and abounding love to accomplish through hard work, the challenges that life gives you to deal with.

Their life beyond the gate became a happy and fruitful life with many happy memories. It also gave Anita the inspiration to write a manuscript Beyond the Black Gate.

She never lost sight and continued to build upon this endeavor. Anita liked to express life in poetry and short essays, so this is what this book has become. Through these words our life, dreams, and inspiration are revealed.

In 2008, Jim and Anita retired to Cleburne County, Arkansas, on the family farm. Anita's roots beyond the black gate went with them.

After many years as Anita and I finished our labor of love, developing our little farm into a paradise, to us anyhow, we had an Amish neighbor, Amos King, to build a gate of steel, which was mounted by the old wood black gate. This new black gate came with us to Cleburne County, Arkansas, as a moment and continuation action of our lives beyond the black gate. New dreams and developments were continued on this old Sutherland and fam until Anita went to rest.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Newman Springs Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: May 15, 2024
• ISBN: 9798893081701

Book preview

Table of Contents

Title

Copyright

About This Book

My Story at Its Best in Poetry

Wake Me

The Special Man

He Could Have Been

God's Plan

Where Is He?

A Different World

Days Like Today

Best Poets of 2010

Reflecting Life's Journey

Talking

Rainy Seasons

A Blazing Light

Before the Day Is Done

My Wish for You

The Childhood Place

Can We Go Back?

Cocoa

Mrs. Caroline

Aunt Gladys's Awesome Apron

Chalupa

Go Outside

An Oak Tree

In the Mountains

Aunt Net Ward

514 Rector Street

Listening

Flip Side of Winter

The Bunkhouse

Mother

Wayne Raney's Fox Hunting Song

Today

The Air We Breathe

The Deer

While Playing Beethoven on My Computer

My Friend

A Mother's Day Tribute

Finding Facts

Wolf Bayou Moon

Somewhere You and I

I See

Remembering Ava Baker

First Best Friend

Essay for the Book Beyond the Black Gate

Childhood Reflections

Rockville's Reflection

Creative Writing for My Book

My Brother Ben

Christmas Traditions of the Past

Author's Notes to the Reader

Essay for the Book

The Swinging Bridge

Essay for the Book Beyond the Black Gate

Robbie's House

Childhood Reflections

Creative Writing for My Book

Christmas Day in 2002

Essay for the Book Beyond the Black Gate

Remembering the Raney Family

Assignment no. 2 for Beyond the Black Gate

A Noble Man

For the Poem Collection

The Angels of Peace

Living on a Houseboat

Writing

Observing a Person

Anna

Review on the Novel Mrs. Mike

Mrs. Mike, Written by Benedict and Nancy Freedman

Writing Review

Book Mutant Message Down Under

Author's Comment

About the Authors

cover.jpg

Beyond the Black Gate Vol. II

Anita Sutherland Gardner and James Gardner

Copyright © 2024 Anita Sutherland Gardnerand James Gardner

All rights reserved

First Edition

NEWMAN SPRINGS PUBLISHING

320 Broad Street

Red Bank, NJ 07701

First originally published by Newman Springs Publishing 2024

ISBN 979-8-89308-169-5 (Paperback)

ISBN 979-8-89308-170-1 (Digital)

Printed in the United States of America

About This Book

Shortly after Jim and Anita married, they moved to a small thirty-acre primitive plot in Parke County, Indiana, known as the Covered Bridge Capital of America.

To gain entrance to this property, you had to pass through the only structure on the property, a black wooded farm gate. It was beyond this black gate that Jim and Anita started their journey in life.

This journey was like many other folks, experiences filled with hopes, dreams, and abounding love to accomplish through hard work, the challenges that life gives you to deal with.

Their life beyond the gate became a happy and fruitful life with many happy memories. It also gave Anita the inspiration to write a manuscript Beyond the Black Gate.

She never lost sight and continued to build upon this endeavor. Anita liked to express life in poetry and short essays, so this is what this book has become. Through these words our life, dreams, and inspiration are revealed.

In 2008, Jim and Anita retired to Cleburne County, Arkansas, on the family farm. Anita's roots beyond the black gate went with them.

After many years as Anita and I finished our labor of love, developing our little farm into a paradise, to us anyhow, we had an Amish neighbor, Amos King, to build a gate of steel, which was mounted by the old wood black gate. This new black gate came with us to Cleburne County, Arkansas, as a moment and continuation action of our lives beyond the black gate. New dreams and developments were continued on this old Sutherland and fam until Anita went to rest.

James

My Story at Its Best in Poetry

I am a gal from the good old days, a wife, mother, and a grateful grandmom.

I feel creative and alive. My hair is not gray because it's dyed.

I buy too many pictures but go shopping anyway; I'm always looking for more.

My greatest love is God, family, an honest-to-goodness friend, fresh air, and America.

There are goals in my head, which exceed years left to live; I make them instead.

I don't have plans to feel, look, or act over the hill, unless I need a nap.

One of my biggest challenges is living up to our family name,

Making memories while living on my grandparents' homestead,

Entwining the past with the present and passing our stories on the same.

I love eating fresh vegetables, selecting seafood on the shore,

Or drinking tea and coffee in Australia. Most of all, I cherish the times I

Ate Mother's rhubarb cobbler, cooling on her one-hundred-year-old table she adored.

My husband and I have multiple interest, from bird-watching to reading we share,

Like dinner theater's good movies, road trips, and geese on the ponds.

I feel younger spending time with my grandchildren or springtime in the air.

Nothing can top being my dad and mom's child or when my husband calls me

Hon, when my children say, Mom, or grandchildren call me Nana.

That's what my life has become.

Anita Sutherland Gardner

Biography

I was raised in Wolf Bayou, Arkansas. Life was challenging to keep up with my brother Ben, who was older. Without electricity on the farm, we drew water from the well for drinking, bathing, and feeding Mom's chickens. Along with splitting wood, planting everything by hand, bailing hay during the hottest part of summer, and eating corn bread we survived. If I met Dad with his team at dinner, I could ride ole Jake home. In years following our lives were enriched. Eventually, we moved away.

Wake Me

Oh, wake me, little wren, give me the spirit this morning to begin

Fresh as a lily in the field, like a songbird sharing a spring thrill.

Lift me up from my winter's spell; take me to the window again.

Sing to me last year's song, Come fly with me to mockingbird hill.

Open my eyes toward the sky that I might see the beauty so high.

Look not the other way, for the dust and dishes will keep and stay.

Peer outward, not inward, changing my eyes to be bright, cheerful, and gay.

Listening to the crow on the limb at 8:00 a.m., saying, Time to begin.

Ah, I'm beginning to move one foot at a time!

Telling me to bundle up and go outside, if only to stand

Or lounge in the swing temporarily but not to stay.

Encourage me to stroll in the yard this perfectly wonderful day.

Dedicated to my dear writing friend, Carol Jewell

After a very long cold winter.

Anita Sutherland, Gardner

The Special Man

There were those lonely years' time without an end

The years I truly needed a kind understand friend

Just someone to chat with now and again

Someone I could feel comfortable with

I had a heart that needed to mend

I had a family, a boy and girl

The bases of my whole wide world

They were always there then

To supporting me in my dreams

We were all we had, with no one in between

A special man came along one Independence Day

Eight years after my hopes had all gone their way

Now things were no longer gloomy and gray

I only hoped he'd decide to permanently stay

He made a commitment to love, honor, and stay

It was life's rainbow, come what may

Things were never easy, not to this day

He was the sunshine; I was the ray

He made sacrifices only for himself

He started with whatever was left

It didn't bother him that he came from behind

He built a house that was finer than fine

We neither had too much silver or gold

We both had lost all that before

But we managed to keep the wolf

Away from our door

We still were young then but hardly knew

We were so busy; we didn't know what to do

Just how fast time had flown

Years had gone, now unknown

Time was not wasted, not a single day

We had a list and bills to pay

That's the name of the game, don't you know

That's why we enjoy it so

Written for my special man

Anita Gardner

September 16, 2000

He Could Have Been

There's no place quite like it

Not this particular farm

The birds start to chatter softly

An hour before the dawn

The