It’s the immemorial feelings I like the best: hunger, thirst, their satisfaction; work-weariness, earned rest; the falling again from loneliness to love; the green growth the mind takes from the pastures in March; the gayety in the stride of a good team of Belgian mares that seems to shudder from me through all my ancestry. ~Wendell Berry “Goods”
photo by Joel De Waardphoto by Joel De Waardphoto by Joel De Waardphoto by Joel De Waard
It’s not likely anyone would say I didn’t work hard enough.
After all, I come from a long line of human work-horses who knew it takes sweat and tears, and sometimes bleeding.
Even so, all those years I know I could have plowed more deeply than I did.
I could have thrown myself more fully into the pull on the tugs, shared the load more effectively, shouldered the yoke with greater enthusiasm, bent my neck down low with unbroken determination.
You could say somewhere I lost the gayety in my stride, and you would be right — toward the end, I was trudging through the furrow, bruised from turning up too many submerged rocks, bumping into immoveable tree stumps, tripping on hidden roots, stuck in the deep mud of long and lonely post-midnight hours.
You might even say the knowledge of a job well-done lay at a depth my plow could ever reach.
I had seen others die in the harness, never able to rest easy.
A few years ago I knew the time had come to shrug off the yoke, shake off the bridle and bit, shudder free of the harness.
On this side of the ground, I find myself wondering and wandering, the blinkers no longer impeding my vision, feeling the morning sun on my unyoked withers.
Yet when I see an untilled field, something in me even now still tries to hold on to the plow —
photo by Joel De Waardphoto by Joel De Waardphoto by Joel De Waard
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In truth I am puzzled most in life by nine horses.
Two are on one side of the fence and seven on the other side.
They stare at one another from the same places hours and hours each day.
This is another unanswerable question to haunt us with the ordinary.
We live far out in the country where I hear creature voices night and day.
Like us they are talking about their lives on this brief visit to earth.
In truth each day is a universe in which we are tangled in the light of stars.
Stop a moment. Think about these horses in their sweet-smelling silence. ~Jim Harrison from “Horses”
What is this life is, full of care We have no time to stand and stare. No time to stand beneath the boughs And stare as long as sheep or cows. No time to see, when woods we pass, Where squirrels hide their nuts in grass. No time to see, in broad daylight, Streams full of stars, like skies at night. No time to turn at Beauty’s glance, And watch her feet, how they can dance. No time to wait till her mouth can Enrich that smile her eyes began. A poor life this if, full of care, We have no time to stand and stare. ~William Henry Davies “Leisure”
Fingers of twilight shadow begin to reach over the hill crawling down through the field up unto the bank of blackberries covering fences along the alder grove.
Our horses chew their last clover leafs before coming to the barn for night, eyelids heavy, relaxed and full, drowsy with summer evening peace at hand and hoof.
A sudden change in the air forces their heads up and ears forward; they form a line, standing and staring at the hilltop above them, riveted to the spot, alert to an incoming intruder, unfamiliar and foreign.
The roar is intermittent, like a warm wind rattling a barn roof, but inconstant; then peaking over the crest of the hill a rounded top of technicolor glory:
The hot air balloon rises.
The horses riveted, baffled, fascinated; no wild instinct prepares their response to this wizard’s act from Oz in their own backyard.
The basket riders wave and laugh at the equine audience below standing in formation with golden noses in the air and white manes blowing in the breeze.
The balloon summits the hill, dipping low, almost touchable before moving back up to race the sunset, and search out other pastures, other valleys and hills.
The horses released from the spell of “stand and stare” leap in response, snowy tails high, noses flared-
To race up the hill to capture impending darkness, our night-mares cavort, float suspended until their air is let out, gently, in softening snorts, to settle down in a straw bed in the barn where night, becomes blissfully ordinary again.
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I spent seven hours yesterday at my daughter’s house helping her expand their garden by at least ten times. We dug up sod by the shovelful, shook off the dirt as best we could; sod into the wheelbarrow and off to the pile at the edge of the yard. Then all that over and over again. Five hours total work-time, with time out for lunch and supper. By the time I got home I knew all too well that seventy-two is not thirty-five; I could barely move.
I got to quit earlier than Nadine. She told me I’d done enough and that I should go get a beer and lie down on the chaise lounge and cheer her on, which is what I did.
All this made me remember my father forty years ago helping me with my garden. My father’s dead now, and has been dead for many years, which is how I’ll be one of these days too. And then Nadine will help her child, who is not yet here, with her garden. Old Nadine, aching and sore, will be in my empty shoes, cheering on her own.
So it goes. The wheel turns, generation after generation, around and around. We ride for a little while, get off and somebody else gets on. Over and over, again and again. ~David Budbill “Seventy-Two Is Not Thirty-Five” from Tumbling toward the End
The wheel turns, we cycle around again, get on and eventually get off. This is a week of July birthdays in our family, for both old and young.
This hit me when we celebrated our grandson’s third birthday a few days ago in a suburban backyard where my daughter has continued the Gibson/Polis gardening tradition, using the compost we hauled in our truck from our farm several hours away.
Her peas were full and ripe and juicy, her greens lush and tasty – simple perfection thanks to her careful tending.
Meanwhile, our son gardens with his three boys in a very small urban backyard in Denver, teaching them what is weed and what will become a future meal.
I couldn’t help but get weepy, enjoying that special birthday feast.
…and knowing someday, our grandsons will plant and weed and harvest from the soil just as we and their parents did, over and over, again and again.
And this is why my eyes are closed It’s just as well for all I’ve seen And so it goes, and so it goes And you’re the only one who knows ~Billy Joel
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They brought to the Pharisees the man who had been blind. Now the day on which Jesus had made the mud and opened the man’s eyes was a Sabbath. Therefore the Pharisees also asked him how he had received his sight. “He put mud on my eyes,” the man replied, “and I washed, and now I see.” Some of the Pharisees said, “This man is not from God, for he does not keep the Sabbath.” But others asked, “How can a sinner perform such signs?” So they were divided.
Then they turned again to the blind man, “What have you to say about him? It was your eyes he opened.” The man replied, “He is a prophet.” They still did not believe that he had been blind and had received his sight until they sent for the man’s parents. “Is this your son?” they asked. “Is this the one you say was born blind? How is it that now he can see?”
“We know he is our son,” the parents answered, “and we know he was born blind. But how he can see now, or who opened his eyes, we don’t know. Ask him. He is of age; he will speak for himself.” His parents said this because they were afraid of the Jewish leaders, who already had decided that anyone who acknowledged that Jesus was the Messiah would be put out of the synagogue.That was why his parents said, “He is of age; ask him.”
A second time they summoned the man who had been blind. “Give glory to God by telling the truth,” they said. “We know this man is a sinner.”He replied, “Whether he is a sinner or not, I don’t know. One thing I do know. I was blind but now I see!”
Then they asked him, “What did he do to you? How did he open your eyes?” He answered, “I have told you already and you did not listen. Why do you want to hear it again? Do you want to become his disciples too?” Then they hurled insults at him and said, “You are this fellow’s disciple! We are disciples of Moses!We know that God spoke to Moses, but as for this fellow, we don’t even know where he comes from.”
The man answered, “Now that is remarkable! You don’t know where he comes from, yet he opened my eyes.We know that God does not listen to sinners. He listens to the godly person who does his will.Nobody has ever heard of opening the eyes of a man born blind. If this man were not from God, he could do nothing.” To this they replied, “You were steeped in sin at birth; how dare you lecture us!” And they threw him out.
Jesus heard that they had thrown him out, and when he found him, he said, “Do you believe in the Son of Man?” “Who is he, sir?” the man asked. “Tell me so that I may believe in him.” Jesus said, “You have now seen him; in fact, he is the one speaking with you.” Then the man said, “Lord, I believe,” and he worshiped him.
Jesus said, “For judgment I have come into this world, so that the blind will see and those who see will become blind.” Some Pharisees who were with him heard him say this and asked, “What? Are we blind too?” Jesus said, “If you were blind, you would not be guilty of sin; but now that you claim you can see, your guilt remains. John 9: 13-41
When we look long at one another, we soften, we relent, listen,
might forgive. We allow for silence —and when we see each other,
are known, and in that moment might change
though nothing has moved or been spoken.
There are some who say the walls cannot be broken,
but suddenly we are in a free place, and the fields
that extend from its center stretch for miles
as if out of the pupil and the iris of that momentary kingdom. ~Annie Lighthart “When We Look” from Pax
Why no! I never thought other than That God is that great absence In our lives, the empty silence Within, the place where we go Seeking, not in hope to Arrive or find. He keeps the interstices In our knowledge, the darkness Between stars. His are the echoes We follow, the footprints he has just Left. We put our hands in His side hoping to find It warm. We look at people And places as though he had looked At them, too; but miss the reflection. ~R.S. Thomas “Via Negativa”
It is this great absence that is like a presence, that compels me to address it without hope of a reply. It is a room I enter
from which someone has just gone, the vestibule for the arrival of one who has not yet come. I modernise the anachronism
of my language, but he is no more here than before. Genes and molecules have no more power to call him up than the incense of the Hebrews
at their altars. My equations fail as my words do. What resources have I other than the emptiness without him of my whole being, a vacuum he may not abhor? ~R.S. Thomas “The Absence”
We cannot recognize our blindness, unaware of what we can’t see and don’t know, until our eyes are opened.
Before that happens, all we know is the emptiness behind our closed eyes.
How can we know what vision we are capable of until suddenly, miraculously, it is given to us in a gift of grace.
Lord, banish the blindness of my guilt, fill the vacuum of my emptiness with your love, allow me to see — not only the world around me, but to look deeply into other open eyes and see You reflected.
Open up my eyes, so I might see That You have made these ways for me Open up my eyes so I may see That You my God, will walk with me ~Chorus lyrics from All My Ways are Known to You
I am reading slowly through the words in the Book of John over the next year alongside my church family. Once a week, I will invite you to “come and see” what those words might mean as we explore His promises together.
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Who loves the rain And loves his home, And looks on life with quiet eyes, Him will I follow through the storm; And at his hearth-fire keep me warm; Nor hell nor heaven shall that soul surprise, Who loves the rain, And loves his home, And looks on life with quiet eyes. ~Frances Shaw, “Who loves the rain” from Look To the Rainbow of Grace
Now more than ever you can be generous toward each day that comes, young, to disappear forever, and yet remain unaging in the mind. Every day you have less reason not to give yourself away. ~Wendell Berry from “There is no going back”
What a wonder I was when I was young, as I learn by the stern privilege of being old: how regardlessly I stepped the rough pathways of the hillside woods, treaded hardly thinking the tumbled stairways of the steep streams, and worked unaching hard days thoughtful only of the work, the passing light, the heat, the cool water I gladly drank. ~Wendell Berry “VII” 2015 from Another Day
I would like to be the air that inhabits you for a moment only. I would like to be that unnoticed and that necessary… ~Margaret Atwood
I stop writing the poem to fold the clothes. No matter who lives or who dies, I’m still a woman. I’ll always have plenty to do. I bring the arms of his shirt together. Nothing can stop our tenderness. I’ll get back to the poem. I’ll get back to being a woman. But for now there’s a shirt, a giant shirt in my hands, and somewhere a small girl standing next to her mother watching to see how it’s done. ~Tess Gallagher “I Stop Writing the Poem”
For Dan’s 73rd birthday…
In this journey together, we inhabit each other, however long may be the road we travel; you have become the air I breathe, refreshing, renewing, restoring~~ you are that necessary to me, and that beloved.
Each year, as we grow older together: grayer, softer, gentler with ourselves, each other, and the world.
I pause to say, on this day you were born, thank you, God, yet again for bringing you to earth so we could meet, raise our three amazing children, and now six grandchildren, with another on the way, walking life together with faith and hope and dreams.
It was your quiet brown eyes I trusted first and just knew I’d follow you anywhere, and I have…
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When it snows, he stands at the back door or wanders around the house to each window in turn and watches the weather like a lover. O farm boy, I waited years for you to look at me that way. Now we’re old enough to stop waiting for random looks or touches or words, so I find myself watching you watching the weather, and we wait together to discover whatever the sky might bring. ~Patricia Traxler “Weather Man”
My father was a skywatcher, cloud-noter, wind-gauger,
trained since birth to check the weather first thing and last. In those last
dim years when all else had left mind and memory, he’d still stare keenly out the car window
as I drove him to neurologist or podiatrist, and exclaim with joy and
satisfaction: Look at those clouds! And I knew right then that watching the sky
was a good way to conduct a life– that reading the outlines of clouds,
lifting a finger to the pulse of breeze coming your way,
is what can hold you close, clasp you tight to the thrum. ~Wendy Ingersoll “Weatherman”
My farm boy still looks at me that way, wondering if today will bring a storm, or a scorcher, or a deluge, and I reassure him as best I can, because he knows me so well in our many years together:
today, like nearly every other day, will be mostly cloudy with occasional sun breaks.
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We may ignore, but we can nowhere evade, the presence of God. The world is crowded with Him. He walks everywhere incognito. And the incognito is not always easy to penetrate. The real labor is to remember to attend. In fact to come awake. Still more to remain awake. ~C.S. Lewis from “Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer”
I worked hard in my professional life to be interruptible: my patients, colleagues and staff needed to be able to stop my momentum at any time to ask a question, get an opinion or redirect my attention to something more important. As a physician, it was crucial that I remained prioritized from outside my field of vision as I was not always aware at any given time where I’m needed most.
Yet in my personal life, I struggle with interruptions happening outside my control. I feel imposed upon when things don’t flow as I hoped or planned– after all, this is MY life.
Yet…
God interrupts. God interferes. God intervenes. God intrudes. God intercedes.
As He must, because He is God. And I must be ready, accepting, answering His grace with grace.
It is HIS life living within me, His plan, His timing, His priorities.
Not mine.
Never mine.
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Tonight at dusk we linger by the fence around the garden, watching the wound husks of moonflowers unclench themselves slowly, almost too slow for us to see their moving— you notice only when you look away and back, until the bloom decides, or seems to decide, the tease is over, and throws its petals backward like a sail in wind, a suddenness about this as though it screams, almost the way a newborn screams at pain and want and cold, and I still hear that cry in the shout across the garden to say another flower is about to break. I go to where my daughter stands, flowers strung along the vine like Christmas lights, one not yet lit. We praise the world by making others see what we see. So now she points and feels what must be pride when the bloom unlocks itself from itself. And then she turns to look at me. ~James Davis May “Moonflowers” from32 Poems Magazine
When once the sun sinks in the west, And dewdrops pearl the evening’s breast; Almost as pale as moonbeams are, Or its companionable star, The evening primrose opes anew Its delicate blossoms to the dew; And, hermit-like, shunning the light, Wastes its fair bloom upon the night, Who, blindfold to its fond caresses, Knows not the beauty it possesses; Thus it blooms on while night is by; When day looks out with open eye, Bashed at the gaze it cannot shun, It faints and withers and is gone. ~John Clare “Evening Primrose”
Ever since I was a kid, I have needed to share with others something special I’ve seen — a “hey, take a look at this!” moment so I can witness it again through their eyes.
Sharing can make it even sweeter.
Sometimes others see what I see; sometimes not. Sometimes others wonder what has gotten into me.
I was an odd farm kid, no question: a summer twilight’s entertainment might be watching evening primrose blossoms open at night.
Evening primrose and moonflower are night blooming plants meant to attract pollinating moths.
At dusk, (one could set one’s watch by the primrose’s punctuality) one green wrapped bud per stem would open, revealing a bright yellow blossom with four delicate veined petals, a rosette of stamens and a cross-shaped stigma in the center, rising far above the blossom. The yellow was so vivid and lively, it seemed almost like a drop of sun was left on earth to light the night. By morning, the bloom would begin to wither and wilt under the real sunlight, somehow overcome with the brightness, and would blush a pinkish orange as it folded upon itself, ready to die and drop from the plant in only a day or two, leaving a bulging seed pod behind.
As a kid, I would settle cross-legged on our damp lawn at twilight to watch the choreography of the opening of evening primrose blossoms. With diminishing light and cooler temperatures, there would be a sudden loosening of the protective green husk, an almost audible release. Then over the course of about a minute, the overlapping yellow petals would unfurl, slowly, gently and purposefully in an unlocking action that revealed their pollen treasure trove inside.
It was like watching time lapse cinematography, only this was an accelerated, real time flourish of sudden beauty, happening right before my eyes.
It was magic. I always felt privileged to witness each unveiling as so few flowers ever allow us to behold their unfolding.
On those lazy summer evenings, my younger brother wasn’t nearly as impressed when I tried to lure him into becoming flower-audience along with me. That’s okay; I was always underwhelmed by the significance of his favorite football team’s touchdowns that he insisted on sharing with me.
He was sure my priorities were screwy.
Possibly he was right. Even so, I wanted you all to know about something so special as a flower knowing exactly the best time to open to attract nocturnal pollinators, and manages it in under a minute, all because the waning light and cooler temperatures causes a sudden rush of cellular fluid into the bottom hinges of the petals, forcing them to pop open.
What a smart plant. What an even smarter God, worthy of praise.
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It’s a dangerous business, Frodo, going out of your door. You step into the Road, and if you don’t keep your feet, there is no knowing where you might be swept off too. ~J.R.R. Tolkien – Bilbo to Frodo in Fellowship of the Rings
What if this road, that has held no surprises these many years, decided not to go home after all; what if it could turn left or right with no more ado than a kite-tail? What if its tarry skin were like a long, supple bolt of cloth, that is shaken and rolled out, and takes a new shape from the contours beneath? And if it chose to lay itself down in a new way, around a blind corner, across hills you must climb without knowing what’s on the other side, who would not hanker to be going, at all risks? Who wants to know a story’s end, or where a road will go? ~Sheenagh Pugh “What if This Road?”
I do not think that all who choose wrong roads perish; but their rescue consists in being put back on the right road. ~C.S. Lewis from The Great Divorce
We grow accustomed to the Dark — When Light is put away — As when the Neighbor holds the Lamp To witness her Good bye —
A Moment — We Uncertain step For newness of the night — Then — fit our Vision to the Dark — And meet the Road — erect —
And so of larger — Darknesses — Those Evenings of the Brain — When not a Moon disclose a sign — Or Star — come out — within —
The Bravest — grope a little — And sometimes hit a Tree Directly in the Forehead — But as they learn to see —
Either the Darkness alters — Or something in the sight Adjusts itself to Midnight — And Life steps almost straight. ~Emily Dickinson
So few grains of happiness measured against all the dark and still the scales balance.
The world asks of us only the strength we have and we give it. Then it asks more, and we give it. ~Jane Hirschfield from “The Weighing”
I admit I stumble if not careful, bearing some bruises and scrapes from hazards hidden in darkness.
My eyes slowly adjust to such bare illumination, when the Lamp is dim and the road unfamiliar.
I’m feeling my way through uncertainty in this time of life.
I suspect there are fellow darkness travelers who also have lost their way and their Light, giving away what they can and sometimes more than they have.
And so, blinded as we each are, we run forehead-first into the Tree which has always been there and always will be, the symbol of our salvation.
Because of who we are and Who loves us, we, now free and forgiven, safely follow a darkened road made nearly straight, all the way Home.
Lyrics: Tell me where is the road I can call my own, That I left, that I lost, so long ago. All these years I have wondered, oh when will I know, There’s a way, there’s a road that will lead me home.
After wind, After rain, when the dark is done, As I wake from a dream, in the gold of day, Through the air there’s a calling from far away, There’s a voice I can hear that will lead me home.
Rise up, follow me, come away is the call With (the) love in your heart as the only song There is no such beauty as where you belong Rise up, follow me, I will lead you home.
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Henry Polis 1968Pouring the sidewalk by handGrouting the tile perimeter
Thirty-one years ago today we watched by your bedside as you labored, readying yourself to die; we could not help other than to be there while you slipped farther away from us.
This dying, the hardest work you had ever done:
harder than handling the plow behind a team of draft horses, harder than confronting a broken, alcoholic and abusive father, harder than slashing brambles and branches to clear the woods, harder than digging out stumps, shoring up foundations, fixing roofs, harder than shipping out to war, harder than leaving behind a new wife after a week of marriage, harder than leading a battalion to battle on Saipan, Tinian and Tarawa, harder than returning home so changed there were no words, harder than returning to school, working long hours to support family, harder than running a farm with nothing but muscle and will power, harder than coping with an ill wife, infertility, job conflict, discontent, harder than building your own garage, your own house, a pool, harder than ending your marriage, a second wife dying, and returning home forgiven.
Dying was the hardest of all as no amount of muscle or smarts could stop it from crushing you, you, who could do nearly anything you put your mind and muscle to, taking away the strength you relied on for nearly 73 years.
So as you lay helpless, moaning, struggling to breathe, we knew most of your hard work was complete; what was yet undone was not for us to finish up for you.
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