And the stillness is in the key, all of it is,The stillness is all in the key of that desolate sound.
~Wallace Stevens from “Autumn Refrain”
Month: October 2013
A Foliaged Farewell
“How innocent were these Trees, that in
Mist-green May, blown by a prospering breeze,
Stood garlanded and gay;
Who now in sundown glow
Of serious color clad confront me with their show
As though resigned and sad,
Trees, who unwhispering stand umber, bronze, gold;
Pavilioning the land for one grown tired and old;
Elm, chestnut, aspen and pine, I am merged in you,
Who tell once more in tones of time,
Your foliaged farewell.”
– Siegfried Sassoon, October Trees
Being Past Our Sight
It would be best to travel light
Between the darkness and the light,
From light of sun to blaze of star
Wherever many mansions are
Or are not, being past our sight
Between the darkness and the light.
~Vassar Miller from “Traveling Light”
I strain to see what I cannot.
I want to see like an eagle, great distances in precise and exacting detail,
or like a microscope scrolling close down to the infinity
within the universe of the cell.
I want to see where I now stand
between the darkness and the light,
how much shadow falls
on me and from me.
I hope to see where I will be,
beyond the limits of sight,
where promises prepare
the darkness to yield to everlasting light.
In my Father’s house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you.
John 14:2
Sodden Sorrow
My sorrow when she’s here with me,
Thinks these dark days of autumn rain
Are beautiful as days can be;
She loves the bare, the withered tree;
She walks the sodden pasture lane.
– Robert Lee Frost
Any Wonderful Unexpected Thing
After the keen still days of September, the October sun filled the world with mellow warmth…
The maple tree in front of the doorstep burned like a gigantic red torch.
The oaks along the roadway glowed yellow and bronze.
The fields stretched like a carpet of jewels, emerald and topaz and garnet.
Everywhere she walked the color shouted and sang around her…
In October any wonderful unexpected thing might be possible.
~Elizabeth George Speare from The Witch of Blackbird Pond
I cannot endure to waste anything so precious as autumnal sunshine by staying in the house.
~Nathaniel Hawthorne
He found himself wondering at times, especially in the autumn, about the wild lands, and strange visions of mountains that he had never seen came into his dreams.”
~ J.R.R. Tolkien from The Fellowship of the Ring
Thinking Autumn Thoughts
That country where it is always turning late in the year.
That country where the hills are fog and the rivers are mist;
where noons go quickly,
dusks and twilights linger,
and midnights stay.
That country composed in the main of cellars,
sub-cellars, coal-bins, closets, attics,
and pantries faced away from the sun.
That country whose people are autumn people,
thinking only autumn thoughts.
Whose people passing at night on the empty walks sound like rain.
~Ray Bradbury from “October Country”
Just as a painter needs light in order to put the finishing touches to his picture,
so I need an inner light,
which I feel I never have enough of in the autumn.
~Leo Tolstoy
Crimson Fingers
…God’s not nonexistent; He’s just been waylaid
by a host of what no one could’ve foreseen.
He’s got plans for you: this red-gold-green parade
is actually a fairly detailed outline.
…it’s true that my Virginia creeper praises Him,
its palms and fingers crimson with applause,
that the local breeze is weaving Him a diadem…
~Jacqueline Osherow from “Autumn Psalm”
~Jacqueline Osherow from “Autumn Psalm”
The crimson leaves creep over the brow of our ancient garage in growing streaks and flowing streams, crawling alongside to reach new destinations.
This old building was once a small church at the turn of the 20th century,
moved just a few hundred yards from the intersection of two country roads
to this raised knoll.
This old building was once a small church at the turn of the 20th century,
moved just a few hundred yards from the intersection of two country roads
to this raised knoll.
It is fitting that every fall this little cedar-paneled church,
emptied of sermons and worship
full of our boxed and stored lives,
weeps red.
Every autumn these bloodied fingers reach out
to touch and bless,
clasp and envelope:
Do not despair.
He’s got plans.
Plans that give hope.
to touch and bless,
clasp and envelope:
Do not despair.
He’s got plans.
Plans that give hope.
I must follow.
Oh, feed me this day, Holy Spirit, with
the fragrance of the fields and the
freshness of the oceans which you have
made, and help me to hear and to hold
in all dearness those exacting and wonderful
words of our Lord Jesus Christ, saying:
Follow me.
~Mary Oliver from “Six Recognitions of the Lord”
the fragrance of the fields and the
freshness of the oceans which you have
made, and help me to hear and to hold
in all dearness those exacting and wonderful
words of our Lord Jesus Christ, saying:
Follow me.
~Mary Oliver from “Six Recognitions of the Lord”
Carrying On
Light as two grasshopper husks,
Hinged wings,
Mirror image, seesaw,
Picket twin, swallowtail,
Wind foe.
The crux in hand, a woman’s tool.
Well worn as my feet.
O wood in palm,
Purveyor of order,
The business of carrying on,
The tune whistled under my windowsill.
–Ann Quinn from “Clothespin”
Unexpected Sharpness
Then summer fades and passes and October comes.
We’ll smell smoke then,
and feel an unexpected sharpness,
a thrill of nervousness,
swift elation,
a sense of sadness and departure.
~ Thomas Wolfe
When the Wind Blows Hard
Let us not be surprised when we have to face difficulties.
When the wind blows hard on a tree,
the roots stretch and grow the stronger,
Let it be so with us.
Let us not be weaklings,
yielding to every wind that blows,
but strong in spirit to resist.
~Amy Carmichael
And so the government and its people are at an impasse–the winds of change are pummeling us all and everyone has entrenched more deeply in order to stay upright.
As a U.S. health care provider who has worked for over 30 years as a salaried physician, in non-fee-for-service health care settings providing patient care that meets the need when need arises without profit motive, I am flummoxed by this impasse. Policy makers could not come up with a more simplistic solution than what is contained in 2000+ pages of complex regulations that are already creating bureaucratic havoc in all health care settings, distracting health care providers with electronic and telephone paperwork that pulls us away from the bedside. The patient and the provider no longer partner together without a dozen other entities dictating the choreography of their dance.
A potential solution to the problem of affordable access to all who need it already exists in the form of the Public Health Service Commissioned Corps with incentive scholarships for medical and nursing training in exchange for work in under-served areas. An expansion of such a system, requiring funding at a much lower cost than the billions of dollars required by the current health care reform act, would address the challenges of the uninsured and the uninsurable.
As a medical student in training, I spent many months providing patient care in Seattle’s exemplary Public Health Hospital and its associated clinics. Patients traveled hundreds of miles to see the specialists who worked there; the best and the brightest clinicians saw the poorest of the poor inside those walls, but there were a number of physicians and their families I knew who received their care there as well because they knew the people who worked there were devoted to the patient, not to profit.
When the Executive, Judicial and Legislative branches of government refuse themselves to participate in a health care system they have constructed for the people, then it is not created of the people, by the people, for the people for they are people who get sick and injured just like the rest of us. What is best for them must be best for us all.
All citizens, and non-citizens inside our borders for whatever reason, should have easy access to affordable health care. All health care providers should have opportunity to work off the costs of their training to keep the debt load from crushing them for decades to come.
I am grieved that health care has come to this impasse, with government now in a take-no-prisoners mode that clear-cuts us all down to the bare roots.
We need to lean in together for support and quit the fighting that only creates more injury.
We need look no farther than our own commissioned corps of health care officers. It is an idea whose time has come.
Barnstorming 