Month: February 2014

To Bear the Light

barnstormingblog1 Comment

dripsanddrops

Rain-diamonds, this winter morning,
embellish the tangle of unpruned pear-tree twigs;
each solitaire, placed, it appears,
with considered judgement,
bears the light beneath the rifted clouds —
the indivisible shared out in endless abundance.
~Denise Levertov “Bearing the Light”

Indivisible inestimable abundance —
as belighted jewels
descend from heaven
to adorn the plain and meager
on earth.

Nothing warrants
such grace falling like rain,
to cling like sequins sparkling
on our veil of tears.

novemberdrops

Go back

Your message has been sent

Tenderness Upon Tenderness

barnstormingblogLeave a comment

rosedrizzle

Abandon entouré d’abandon, tendresse touchant aux tendresses…
C’est ton intérieur qui sans cesse se caresse, dirait-on;
se caresse en soi-même, par son propre reflet éclairé.
Ainsi tu inventes le thème du Narcisse exaucé.
~Rainer Maria Rilke “Dirait-on” from his French Poetry collection ‘Les chansons de la rose’

Translation by Clarissa Aykroyd

Abandon upon abandon,
tenderness upon tenderness…
Your hidden self unceasingly
turns inward, a caress;

caressing itself, in and of its own
reflection illuminated.
Thus you’ve invented the tale
of Narcissus sated.

 

The dozen red roses from my husband for Valentine’s Day brought this beautiful piece to mind:
There is nothing so tender as a rose in full bloom–
no longer an enclosed bud
but an opening,
petal unfolding upon petal
in caressing abandon.

Morten Lauridsen’s choral version –http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gWXVZlrLa6E

rosedrizzle2

Given the Choice

barnstormingblog2 Comments

sunset12713

sistersfence

I go to the mountain side
of the house to cut saplings,
and clear a view to snow
on the mountain. But when I look up,
saw in hand, I see a nest clutched in
the uppermost branches.
I don’t cut that one.
I don’t cut the others either.
Suddenly, in every tree,
an unseen nest
where a mountain
would be.
~Tess Gallagher “Choices”

Such tenderness,
such recognition of the other,
to save the nest
and all future potential nests
rather than a clear cut stripping
for the sake of unimpeded world view,
when the freedom of a mountain backdrop
is sacrificed–

such tenderness
when the right to choose can only mean
choosing to do right.

 

twinsappearing2

 

The Air Sighs

barnstormingblog1 Comment

marchmoonbaker

When, in the cavern darkness, the child
first opened his mouth (even before
his eyes widened to see the supple world
his lungs had breathed into being),
could he have known that breathing
trumps seeing? Did he love the way air sighs
as it brushes in and out through flesh
to sustain the tiny heart’s iambic beating,
tramping the crossroads of the brain
like donkey tracks, the blood dazzling and
invisible, the corpuscles skittering to the earlobes
and toenails? Did he have any idea it
would take all his breath to speak in stories
that would change the world?
~Luci Shaw “Breath”
Breath that created the world
by forming the Words
that tell the stories
that change the world.
We rest in that breath today,
sighing in Sabbath.

northernlandscape2

The Corner Has Been Turned

barnstormingblog3 Comments

croci3

…To be sure, it feels wintry enough still:
but often in the very early spring it feels like that.
Two thousand years are only a day or two by this scale.
A man really ought to say,
‘The Resurrection happened two thousand years ago’
in the same spirit in which he says ‘I saw a crocus yesterday.’

Because we know what is coming behind the crocus.
The spring comes slowly down this way;
but the great thing is that the corner has been turned.
There is, of course, this difference that in the natural spring
the crocus cannot choose whether it will respond or not.
We can.
We have the power either of withstanding the spring,
and sinking back into the cosmic winter, or of going on …
to which He is calling us.
It remains with us to follow or not,
to die in this winter,
or to go on into that spring and that summer.
~C.S. Lewis–in The Grand Miracle, God in the Dock

 

Whether mid-winter or early autumn
the crocus are unexpected,
surprising even to the observant.

Hidden potential beneath the surface,
an incubation readily triggered
by advancing or retreating light from above.

Waiting with temerity,
to be called forth from earthly grime
and granted reprieve from indefinite interment.

A luminous gift of hope and beauty
borne from a humble bulb;
so plain and only dirt adorned.

Summoned, the deep lavender harbinger rises
from sleeping frosted ground in February
or spent topsoil, exhausted in October.

These bold blossoms do not pause
for snow and ice nor hesitate to pierce through
a musty carpet of fallen leaves.

They break free to surge skyward
cloaked in tightly bound brilliance,
spaced strategically to be deployed against the darkness.

Slowly unfurling, the violet petals peel to reveal golden crowns,
royally renouncing the chill of winter’s beginning and end,
staying brazenly alive when little else is.

In the end,  they painfully wilt, deeply bruised and purple
under the Sun’s reflection made manifest;
returning defeated, inglorious, fallen, to dust.

They will rise yet again.

photo by Josh Scholten
photo by Josh Scholten

croci13

Stable Harmony

barnstormingblog3 Comments

dandydrizzle

1904172_598840872414_1512230259_n
photo of snow storm in Tokyo by Nate Gibson

…the artist has merely to be more keenly aware than others
of the harmony of the world,
of the beauty and ugliness of the human contribution to it,
and to communicate this acutely to his fellow-men.
And in misfortune,
and even at the depths of existence –
in destitution, in prison, in sickness –
his sense of stable harmony never deserts him.
~Alexandr Solzhenitsyn in his Nobel Speech contemplating Dostoevsky’s statement “Beauty will save the World”

treesteps
armedangerous

bench2

Night-Weary Heavens

barnstormingblog1 Comment

sunrisesolstice

sunrise1019

Suddenly a blackbird flew to the top of a beech. She perched way up on the tompost twig that stuck up thin against the sky and sat there watching how, far away over the trees, the night-weary pale-gray heavens were glowing in the distant east and coming to life. Then she commenced to sing.

Her little black body seemed only a tiny dark speck at that distance. She looked like a dead leaf. But she poured out her song in a great flood of rejoicing through the whole forest. And everything began to stir. The finches warbled, the little red-throat and the gold finch were heard. The doves rushed from place to place with a loud clapping and rustling of wings. The pheasants cackled as though their throats would burst. The noise of their wings, as they flew from their roosts to the ground, was soft but powerful. They kept uttering their metallic, splintering call with its soft ensuing chuckle. Far above the falcons cried sharply and joyously, “Yayaya!”

The sun rose.
~Felix Salten from Bambi

 

I had not actually been aware of the silence of the winter sunrise until the birds returned this week and the stillness retreated.   Last autumn their joyous morning songs had gradually ebbed as darkness expanded,  the heavy frosts driving them south to more hospitable climates.  Once in a while, if I listened carefully, there would be geese and trumpeters flying overhead with audible wing rushes and an occasional honk, though invisible in the fog and morning clouds.

Otherwise the eastern winter horizon would be lit to glowing each morning in stillness, without announcement or heralding song.  As if no one was there to notice.

The sunrises have a soundtrack again, just a few lines to introduce the symphony of spring around the corner.   In a short few weeks it will be all out booming chorus and I’ll be wishing for bird mufflers at 4:15 AM.

And so joy returns in the morning and I’m noticing.

sunrise9133

Why Two?

barnstormingblog2 Comments

sunsettreeglory

dogtreefog

Here dies another day
During which I have had eyes, ears, hands
And the great world round me;
And with tomorrow begins another.
Why am I allowed two?
~G.K. Chesterton

Even a Monday,
despite chills and cough,
there is work
that must be done;
I’ve been allowed
this day
to do my best
and maybe as this day dies
there will come
another.

Marchmoon

marchdawn1