Month: November 2014

We Will Remember

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poppypink

They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.
~Lawrence Binyon from “For the Fallen” (1914)

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When you go home tell them of us and say –
“For your tomorrow we gave our today”
from “The Kohima Epitaph

poppy

We are the dead; short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.
~John McCrae from “In Flanders Fields”

 

Tower of London Poppies representing the fallen soldiers from the UK and colonies in WWI
Tower of London Poppies representing the fallen soldiers from the UK and colonies in WWI from BBC London

 Courage is almost a contradiction in terms.
It means a strong desire to live taking the form of a readiness to die.
~ G.K. Chesterton 

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Glowlight on a Grassblade
	


	
					

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sunset11914


О Greater Light, we praise Thee for the less; 

The eastern light our spires touch at morning, 

The light that slants upon our western doors at evening. 

The twilight over stagnant pools at batflight, 

Moon light and star light, owl and moth light, 

Glow-worm glowlight on a grassblade. 

О Light Invisible, we worship Thee! 

      

           In our rhythm of earthly life we tire of light. We are glad 

  when the day ends, when the play ends; and ecstasy is too 

  much pain. 

We are children quickly tired: children who are up in the night 

  and fall asleep as the rocket is fired; and the day is long for 

  work or play. 

We tire of distraction or concentration, we sleep and are glad 

  to sleep, 

Controlled by the rhythm of blood and the day and the night 

  and the seasons. 

And we must extinguish the candle, put out the light and 

  relight it; 

Forever must quench, forever relight the flame. 

Therefore we thank Thee for our little light, that is dappled 

  with shadow. 

~T.S. Eliot from “O Light Invisible”


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So Starved
	


	
					

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cactusbloom


mushroomunderside


I know what you planned, what you meant to do, teaching me

to love the world, making it impossible

to turn away completely, to shut it out completely over again–

it is everywhere; when I close my eyes,

birdsong, scent of lilac in early spring, scent of summer roses:

you mean to take it away, each flower, each connection with earth–

why would you wound me, why would you want me

desolate in the end, unless you wanted me so starved for hope

I would refuse to see that finally

nothing was left to me, and would believe instead

that you were left to me.

~Louise Glück “Vespers”


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Worlds of Wanwood Leafmeal
	


	
					

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dande11149


 


~to a young child~


Márgarét, áre you gríeving


Over Goldengrove unleaving?


Leáves like the things of man, you


With your fresh thoughts care for, can you?


Ah! ás the heart grows older


It will come to such sights colder


By and by, nor spare a sigh


Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie;


And yet you wíll weep and know why.


Now no matter, child, the name:


Sórrow’s spríngs áre the same.


Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed


What heart heard of, ghost guessed:


It ís the blight man was born for,


It is Margaret you mourn for.

~Gerard Manley Hopkins “Spring and Fall”




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Two Kinds of People
	


	
					

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photo by Karen Mullen photography
photo by Karen Mullen photography


There are two kinds of people one can call reasonable, 

those who serve God with all their heart 

because they know him,


and those who seek him with all their heart 

because they do not know him. 

~Blaise Pascal


Some of the worshippers at our 2014 Easter Sunrise Service on our farm hilltop


a stream of people walking up the hill this morning for Easter Sunrise Service on our farm

	


				
	






	
	

		
Flowering From Within
	


	
					

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ivyfrancis


The bud 

stands for all things,

even for those things that don’t flower,

for everything flowers, from within, of self-blessing;

though sometimes it is necessary

to reteach a thing its loveliness,

to put a hand on its brow

of the flower

and retell it in words and in touch

it is lovely

until it flowers again from within, of self-blessing;

as Saint Francis

put his hand on the creased forehead

of the sow, and told her in words and in touch

blessings of earth on the sow, and the sow

began remembering all down her thick length,

from the earthen snout all the way

through the fodder and slops to the spiritual curl of the tail,

from the hard spininess spiked out from the spine

down through the great broken heart

to the blue milken dreaminess spurting and shuddering

from the fourteen teats into the fourteen mouths sucking and blowing beneath

them:

the long, perfect loveliness of sow.

~Galway Kinnell “Saint Francis and the Sow”


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My Heart Bleeds
	


	
					

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fog101919


A weft of leafless spray

Woven fine against the gray

Of the autumnal day,

And blurred along those ghostly garden tops

Clusters of berries crimson as the drops

That my heart bleeds when I remember

How often, in how many a far November,

Of childhood and my children’s childhood I was glad,

With the wild rapture of the Fall,

Of all the beauty, and of all

The ruin, now so intolerably sad.

~William Dean Howells  “November: Impression”


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We Never Know…
	


	
					

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Without realizing it, we fill

 important places in each others’ lives.

 It’s that way with the guy at the corner grocery, the mechanic at the local garage,

 the family doctor, teachers, neighbors, coworkers. Good people who are always “there,”

 who can be relied upon in small,

 important ways. People who teach us,

 bless us, encourage us, support us,

 uplift us in the dailiness of life.


We never tell them.

 I don’t know why, but we don’t.


And, of course, we fill that role ourselves. There are those who depend on us,

 watch us, learn from us, take from us. And we never know.


You may never have proof of your importance,

 but you are more important than you think.

 There are always those who couldn’t do without you. 

The rub is that you don’t always know who.

~Robert Fulghum


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Muffled Whuff
	


	
					

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photo by Steve Balcombe, Scotland
photo of a starling murmuration taken by Steve Balcombe, Scotland


Out of the dimming sky a speck appeared, 

then another, and another. 

It was the starlings going to roost.  

They gathered deep in the distance,  flock sifting into flock,

and strayed towards me, transparent and whirling, like smoke.

They seemed to unravel as they flew,

lengthening in curves, like a loosened skein.  

I didn’t move; 

they flew directly over my head for half an hour.  


Each individual bird bobbed and knitted up and down 

in the flight at apparent random, for no known reason except 

that that’s how starlings fly, yet all remained perfectly spaced.

The flocks each tapered at either end from a rounded middle, like an eye.

Overhead I heard a sound of beaten air, like a million shook rugs, a muffled whuff. 

Into the woods they sifted without shifting a twig, 

right through the crowns of trees, intricate and rushing, like wind.


Could tiny birds be sifting through me right now, 

birds winging through the gaps between my cells,

touching nothing, but quickening in my tissues, fleet?

~Annie Dillard from Pilgrim at Tinker Creek


 


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This Treacherous Month
	


	
					

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bleedingleaf


violetoctober


This is the treacherous month when autumn days

With summer’s voice come bearing summer’s gifts.

Beguiled, the pale down-trodden aster lifts

Her head and blooms again. The soft, warm haze

Makes moist once more the sere and dusty ways,

And, creeping through where dead leaves lie in drifts,

The violet returns. Snow noiseless sifts

Ere night, an icy shroud, which morning’s rays

Will idly shine upon and slowly melt,

Too late to bid the violet live again.

The treachery, at last, too late, is plain;

Bare are the places where the sweet flowers dwelt.

What joy sufficient hath November felt?

What profit from the violet’s day of pain?

~Helen Hunt Jackson “November”


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