September 2015 – Barnstorming

Red-Cheeked Company

September 30, 2015 barnstormingblog2 Comments

You are company, you red-cheeked spitz, or you salmon-fleshed greening!
I toy with you; press your face to mine, toss you in the air, roll you on the ground,
see you shine out where you lie amid the moss and dry leaves and sticks.
You are so alive! You glow like a ruddy flower.
You look so animated I almost expect to see you move.
How compact; how exquisitely tinted!
Stained by the sun and varnished against the rains.
An independent vegetable existence, alive and vascular as my own flesh;
capable of being wounded, bleeding, wasting away, and almost of repairing damages!

I think if I could subsist on you or the like of you,
I should never have an intemperate or ignoble thought,
never be feverish or despondent.
So far as I could absorb or transmute your quality
I should be cheerful, continent, equitable, sweet-blooded,
long-lived, and should shed warmth and contentment around.
~from John Burrough’s essay on “The Apple”

Lo! sweetened with the summer light,
The full-juiced apple, waxing over-mellow,
Drops in a silent autumn night.
~Lord Alfred Tennyson

Pursued by Poplars

September 29, 2015September 29, 2015 barnstormingblogLeave a comment

Another out of sequence post — this was meant for today, Sept. 29

Barnstorming

A row of Populus Nigra (Latin for “people of the dark”), otherwise known as Lombardy Poplars, seems to be following me. I feel pursued by this long border of eighty-plus year old poplars on the west edge of our farm. The trees themselves, supposedly nearing the end of a typical poplar life span, are grand massively tall specimens, their leaves and branches noisily reacting to the tiniest of breezes. In greater winds, they bend and sway wildly, almost elastic. The trees themselves are certainly not going anywhere in their hot pursuit of me, but beneath the ground is a remarkable stealth root system that is creeping outward, reaching inch by inch closer to the house.

That is what strikes fear in my heart.

If I leave those roots undisturbed for only a few months, they swell to arm size, lying just below the surface of the ground, busily sprouting numerous…

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The Boreal Fruit

September 28, 2015 barnstormingblog1 Comment

The moon now rises to her absolute rule,

And the husbandman and hunter

Acknowledge her for their mistress.

Asters and golden reign in the fields

And the life everlasting withers not.

The fields are reaped and shorn of their pride

But an inward verdure still crowns them;

The thistle scatters its down on the pool

And yellow leaves clothe the river—

And nought disturbs the serious life of men.

But behind the sheaves and under the sod

There lurks a ripe fruit which the reapers have not gathered,

The true harvest of the year—the boreal fruit

Which it bears forever,

With fondness annually watering and maturing it.

But man never severs the stalk

Which bears this palatable fruit.
~Henry David Thoreau

So many eyes turned skyward last night
to witness the shadowing of the moon,
its large unblinking eye turned bloodshot.

The wonder is that we are mere witness
to something beyond our reach,
trying our best to harvest, record and keep it.

This morning the moon sets,
bright and cheerful,
as it always does,
and we go about our daily lives
oblivious that it will continue to do so
long after we ourselves are harvested.

A Living Mystery

September 27, 2015 barnstormingblog3 Comments

To be a witness
does not consist in engaging in propaganda
or even in stirring people up,
but in being a living mystery:
it means to live in such a way
that one’s life would not make sense
if God did not exist.
~ Emmanuel Cardinal Suhard of Paris

I’m not sure how much a mystery I am;
I feel transparent as glass most days.
But I make no sense at all,
I could not be seen or seen through
without God’s mystery
creating me and all that exists.
His mystery has lived and breathed
alongside us —
we cannot deny our witness of Him.

Not One Blade of Grass

September 26, 2015 barnstormingblog8 Comments

There is not one blade of grass, there is no color in this world that is not intended to make us rejoice.
~John Calvin

We are given the option to notice
or not
We are given reason to rejoice
or not
We are given a rain-bowed promise to witness
or not.
So why ever not?

A Domestication of Daisies

September 25, 2015September 25, 2015 barnstormingblog3 Comments

Time is a tick, a purr, a drop. The spider
on the dining-room window has fallen asleep
among complexities as I will once

the doors are bolted and the keys tested
and the switch turned up of the kitchen light
which made outside in the back garden

an electric room-a domestication
of closed daisies, an architecture
instant and improbable.
~Eavan Boland from “Nocturne”

As each day blurs so quickly into the next,
I try to lock it up, throw away the key,
preserve them on a shelf like so many jars of fruit
to sample when I’m starving to remember.

Each night suspends
as I turn out the light,
a moment of sighs and murmurs
in gratitude for another day
brief as a daisy
that fades away.

The Human Season

September 24, 2015 barnstormingblogLeave a comment

I speak this poem now with grave and level voice

In praise of autumn, of the far-horn-winding fall.

I praise the flower-barren fields, the clouds, the tall

Unanswering branches where the wind makes sullen noise.

I praise the fall: it is the human season.

Now

No more the foreign sun does meddle at our earth,

Enforce the green and bring the fallow land to birth,

Nor winter yet weigh all with silence the pine bough,

But now in autumn with the black and outcast crows

Share we the spacious world: the whispering year is gone:

There is more room to live now: the once secret dawn

Comes late by daylight and the dark unguarded goes.

Between the mutinous brave burning of the leaves

And winter’s covering of our hearts with his deep snow

We are alone: there are no evening birds: we know

The naked moon: the tame stars circle at our eaves.

It is the human season. On this sterile air

Do words outcarry breath: the sound goes on and on.

I hear a dead man’s cry from autumn long since gone.

I cry to you beyond upon this bitter air.
~Archibald Macleish “Immortal Autumn”

Yield to Change

September 23, 2015 barnstormingblog1 Comment

I went out to cut a last batch of zinnias this
morning from the back fencerow and got my shanks
chilled for sure: furrowy dark gray clouds with
separating fringes of blue sky-grass: and the dew

beaded up heavier than the left-overs of the rain:
in the zinnias, in each of two, a bumblebee
stirring in slow motion. Trying to unwind
the webbed drug of cold, buzzing occasionally but

with a dry rattle: bees die with the burnt honey
at their mouths, at least: the fact’s established:
it is not summer now and the simmering buzz is out of
heat: the zucchini blossoms falling show squash

overgreen with stunted growth: the snapdragons have
suckered down into a blossom or so: we passed
into dark last week the even mark of day and night
and what we hoped would stay we yield to change.
~A.R. Ammons “Equinox”

We yield now
to the heaviness of the change,
the slowing of our walk
and the darkening of our days.
It is time;
when day and night compete
and neither wins.

Never Forgotten

September 22, 2015 barnstormingblog1 Comment

“All in all, it was a never-to-be-forgotten summer — one of those summers which come seldom into any life, but leave a rich heritage of beautiful memories in their going — one of those summers which, in a fortunate combination of delightful weather, delightful friends and delightful doing, come as near to perfection as anything can come in this world.” ~ L.M. Montgomery, Anne’s House of Dreams

Time lurches ahead in imprecisely measured chunks. Sometimes the beginning and ending of seasons are the yardstick, or celebrating a holiday or a birthday. Memories tend to be stickiest surrounding a milestone event: a graduation, a move, a wedding, a birth, a road trip, a funeral.

But Summer needs nothing so remarkable to be memorable. It simply stands on its own in all its extravagant abundance of light and warmth and growth and color stretching deep within the rising and setting horizons. Each long day can feel like it must last forever, never ending, yet it does eventually wind down, spin itself out, darkening gradually into shadow. We let go with reluctance; we feel as if no summer like it will ever come again.

Yet another will, somehow, somewhere, someday. Surely a never-ending summer is what heaven itself will be.

Perfectly delightful and delightfully perfect. We’ve already had a taste.

Congeries of Colored Things

September 21, 2015 barnstormingblog3 Comments

It is a fault of infinity to be too small to find.
It is a fault of eternity to be crowded out by time.
Before our eyes we see an unbroken sheath of colors.
We walk amid a congeries of colored things that part before our steps
to reveal more colored things.
Above us hurtle more things, which fill the universe.
There is no crack.
Where, then, is the gap through which eternity streams?

It is our lives we love, our times, our generation, our pursuits.
And are we called to forsake these vivid and palpable goods
for an idea of which we experience not one trace?
Am I to believe eternity outranks my child’s finger?

Annie Dillard from Teaching a Stone to Talk

If we look closely enough
we see farthest
with eyes closed
to the distraction of life’s colored things,
real and imagined.

Eternity — beyond what we can know
Infinity — beyond what we can conjure

We reach for it
because we are told
it is within our grasp.

I come from Pacific Northwest farmers going back four generations: the daughter of teachers, married to a son of farmers. We have raised three children who are making a difference in the world in their professional lives and as people of faith.

While keeping my eyes and heart open to the extraordinary things around me, I have worked over forty years as a family physician as well as a steward of the small farm we call home.

What I harvest in words or pictures finds its way here.
I welcome your messages and comments sent to emilypgibson@gmail.com

…whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things. … And the God of peace will be with you. Philippians 4: 8 -9

What is my only comfort in life and in death? That I am not my own, but belong—body and soul, in life and in death—to my faithful Savior, Jesus Christ.
~Heidelberg Catechism

Instructions for living a life:
Pay attention.
Be astonished.
Tell about it.
~Mary Oliver

To do the useful thing, to say the courageous thing, to contemplate the beautiful thing: that is enough for one man’s life.
~ T.S. Eliot

A man should hear a little music, read a little poetry, and see a fine picture every day of his life, in order that worldly cares may not obliterate the sense of the beautiful which God has implanted in the human soul.
~Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

To live is so startling, it leaves little room for other occupations.
~Emily Dickinson

I believe in God as I believe that the Sun has risen, not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.
~ C. S. Lewis

Remember this. When people choose to withdraw far from a fire, the fire continues to give warmth, but they grow cold. When people choose to withdraw far from light, the light continues to be bright in itself but they are in darkness. This is also the case when people withdraw from God.
~ Augustine

Hello, sun in my face. Hello you who made the morning and spread it over the fields…Watch, now, how I start the day in happiness, in kindness.
~ Mary Oliver

The seed is in the ground. Now may we rest in hope while darkness does its work.
~ Wendell Berry

Nothing will sustain you more potently than the power to recognize in your humdrum routine the true poetry of life.~ Sir William Osler

But the effect of her being on those around her was incalculably diffusive: for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts, and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.
~George Eliot’s final sentence in Middlemarch

If the world were merely seductive, that would be easy. If it were merely challenging, that would be no problem. But I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve the world and a desire to enjoy the world. This makes it hard to plan the day.
~ E.B. White

Geese appear high over us, pass, and the sky closes. Abandon, as in love or sleep, holds them to their way, clear, in the ancient faith: what we need is here. And we pray, not for new earth or heaven, but to be quiet in heart, and in eye clear. What we need is here.~~ “The Wild Geese” Wendell Berry

Let it come, as it will, and don’t be afraid. God does not leave us comfortless, so let evening come.
~ Jane Kenyon from “Let Evening Come”

You can only come to the morning through the shadows.~ J.R.R. Tolkien

If you want to identify me, ask me not where I live, or what I like to eat, or how I comb my hair, but ask me what I am living for, in detail, ask me what I think is keeping me from living fully for the thing I want to live for. ~ Thomas Merton

This life therefore is not righteousness,
but growth in righteousness,
not health but healing,
not being but becoming,
not rest but exercise.
We are not yet
what we shall be,
but we are growing toward it.
The process is not finished
but it is going on.
This is not the end
but it is the road.
~Martin Luther

Ten times a day something happens to me like this – some strengthening throb of amazement – some good sweet empathic ping and swell. This is the first, the wildest and the wisest thing I know: that the soul exists and is built entirely out of attentiveness.
~ Mary Oliver

It is not your love that sustains the marriage —
but from now on, the marriage that sustains your love.
~ Dietrich Bonhoeffer

She has done what she could…
~Mark 14:8

What do you mean? Do you wish me a good morning, or mean that it is a good morning whether I want it or not; or that you feel good on this morning; or that it is a morning to be good on?~ J. R. R. Tolkien from The Hobbit

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