Month: September 2018

Nowhere to Hide You

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heathermeadowsfoliage1
heathermeadowsfoliage2
When you are already here 
you appear to be only 
a name that tells of you 
whether you are present or not 
and for now it seems as though 
you are still summer 
still the high familiar 
endless summer 
yet with a glint 
of bronze in the chill mornings 
and the late yellow petals 
of the mullein fluttering 
on the stalks that lean 
over their broken 
shadows across the cracked ground 
but they all know 
that you have come 
the seed heads of the sage 
the whispering birds 
with nowhere to hide you 
to keep you for later 
you 
who fly with them 
you who are neither 
before nor after 
you who arrive 
with blue plums 
that have fallen through the night 
perfect in the dew
heathermeadowfoliage3
septembernorth
Each month has its special light
though luminous September sweeps them all;
I must grasp tightly before tomorrow slips away to October.
Like a squirrel, there must be a place
I can hide such riches, tuck the light away in a hole,
pile shells on top,
to bring it out on the darkest winter day
and feast upon it.
I do know better;
this glow follows the birds as they fly away.
They keep it in safekeeping
towing it back on their wings come spring.
In the meantime I must remember
the endless summer that is September.
geesev2
applefall
plum8162
plums2017
fieldnorthsept

Just Passing Through

barnstormingblog4 Comments

goodnightgeese

 

octobergeese

 

morningswans

 

starlingmurmur3

 

All through August and September
            thousands, maybe
tens of thousands, of feathered
            creatures pass through
this place and I almost never see
            a single one. The fall
wood warbler migration goes by here
            every year, all of them,
myriad species, all looking sort of like
            each other, yellow, brown, gray,
all muted versions of their summer selves,
            almost indistinguishable
from each other, at least to me, although
            definitely not to each other, 
all flying by, mostly at night, calling to each
            other as they go to keep
the flock together, saying: chip, zeet,
            buzz, smack, zip, squeak—
            those
sounds reassuring that we are
            all here together and
heading south, all of us just passing
            through, just passing
through, just passing through, just
            passing through.
~David Budbill “Invisible Visitors”

 

starlingmurmur

 

morningswans2

 

geesev3

 

Some feathered travelers slip past us unseen and unheard.  They may stop for a drink in the pond or a bite to eat in the field and woods, but we never know they are there – simply passing through.

Others are compelled to announce their journey with great fanfare, usually heard before seen.  The drama of migration becomes bantering conversation from bird to bird, bird to earth, bird to sun, moon and stars, with unseen magnetic forces pointing the way.

When not using voices, their wings sing the air with rhythmic beat and whoosh.

We’re all together here — altogether — even when our voices are raised sharply, our silences brooding, our hurts magnified, our sorrows deep, so our route of travel becomes a matter of debate.

Our destination is not in dispute however.  We’re all heading to the same place no matter how we get there.

We’re all just passing through, just passing through, just passing through.

 

swansong

 

geeseoctober2

 

starlingmurmur2

 

geese913

Ah, What Then?

barnstormingblog2 Comments

shuksan9271814

 

shuksan927181

 

shuksan9271813

 

What if you slept
And what if
In your sleep
You dreamed
And what if
In your dream
You went to heaven
And there plucked a strange and beautiful flower
And what if
When you awoke
You had that flower in your hand
Ah, what then?
~Samuel Coleridge  “What if you slept”

 

shuksan927187

 

shuksan9271815

 

shuksan9271819

 

shuksan9271818

 

This mountain, this strange and beautiful Shuksan flower that appears suddenly as we round a corner on the hour drive up the Mt. Baker Highway:  this mountain has one foot on earth and one foot in heaven – a thin place if there ever was one.

The only way to approach is in awed silence, as if entering the door of a grand cathedral.  Those who are there speak in hushed tones if they speak at all.

Today Mt Shuksan wears autumn lightly about its shoulders as a multi-faceted cloak, barely anticipating the heavy snow coat to descend in the next two weeks.

I hold this mountain tight in my fist, wanting to turn it this way and that, breathe in its fragrance, bring it home with me and never let go.

Ah, what then?

Home is not nearly big enough for heaven to dwell.  I must content myself with this visit to the thin edge, peering through the open door, and waiting until invited to come inside.

 

 

shuksanpeekaboo2

 

shuksan927184

 

shuksan9271821

 

 

 

 

Alive to Happiness

barnstormingblog6 Comments

oaklane926

 

shuksan104171

 

We hadn’t seen each other
for days, only three days, to be
exact, but when I came through
the door and she turned
her head, the way she smiled
changed me again from one
who passes from this world to the next,
back to one who falls
into his wife’s arms and rests
his head on her shoulder and feels
when they lie down together her warm heart
beating against his chest,
     her hands hungry for his holding,
     his hands alive to her happiness.
~Shann Ray, “Mountain Homecoming” from Balefire: Poems

 

 

IMG_3859

 

On this day,
this tragically public day
when lives shatter before cameras

it is important to remind myself
that not all couplings happen
in blinding drunkenness
in a power differential
in utter selfishness
in a way the truth can never be known
nor trusted.

I need to know
this travesty called investigation
has nothing to do with truth and justice
but is politically sanctioned assault
of two people.
I won’t give it my approval by watching.

I want to know
in our joining
there is joy,
there is sweetness
in need
and sacrifice,
in giving
and taking,
in loving
and staying steadfast,
still alive, always alive
to happiness.

 

harvestmoontree

 

 

 

Returning on Foot

barnstormingblog3 Comments

foggy827183

 

oaklane6

 

They work with herbs
and penicillin.
They work with gentleness
and the scalpel.
They dig out the cancer,
close an incision
and say a prayer
to the poverty of the skin.

…they are only human
trying to fix up a human.
Many humans die.

But all along the doctors remember:
First do no harm.
They would kiss if it would heal.
It would not heal.

If the doctors cure
then the sun sees it.
If the doctors kill
then the earth hides it.
The doctors should fear arrogance
more than cardiac arrest.
If they are too proud,
and some are,
then they leave home on horseback
but God returns them on foot.
~Anne Sexton “Doctors” from The Awful Rowing Toward God.

 

harvestmoon

 

cloudsandponies2

 

Let me not forget how humbling it is
to provide care for a hurting person
and not be certain that what I suggest
will actually work,

to be trusted to recommend the best option
among many~
including tincture of time,
wait and see,
try this or that.

Like other physicians who tumble off
at a full gallop, having lost balance
between confidence and humility,
I sometimes find myself unseated and unsettled,
returning on foot to try again to make a difference.

 

 

sunsettony2

 

sunsetnatetomomi

 

 

 

 

Between the Fading Leaves

barnstormingblog2 Comments

oaklane2

 

oaklane5

 

This is the spot:—how mildly does the sun
Shine in between the fading leaves! The air
In the habitual silence of this wood
Is more than silent; and this bed of heath—

Where shall we find so sweet a resting-place?

Come, let me see thee sink into a dream
Of quiet thoughts protracted till thine eye
Be calm as water when the winds are gone
And no one can tell whither.

My sweet Friend,
We two have had such happy hours together
That my heart melts in me to think of it.
~ William Wordsworth, “Traveling”  from The Collected Poems of William Wordsworth

 

IMG_3296

 

foggypond2

 

Air so silent.  Filtered sunlight on fading leaves.
So calmed with quieting thoughts and restfulness
that my eye is like still water:

Yet how,
within the daily barrage of headlines, broadcasts and opinion experts,
of threats and lies and redemption denied,
can I find calm and stillness?

Where are my sweet friends
for whom my heart melts in remembrance and gratitude?

This is the spot.  This is our respite.  This is where we find one another.

 

morninglayers

 

oaklane3

 

Last Year’s Mistakes Wiped Clean

barnstormingblog1 Comment
redsquare
 
 
That old September feeling, left over from school days, of summer passing… Another fall, another turned page: there was something of jubilee in that annual autumnal beginning, as if last year’s mistakes had been wiped clean by summer.
~Wallace Stegner from Angle of Repose
 
 
 
fallleaves91518
 
 
mapleWWU
 
 
 

Sixteen thousand students have appeared magically overnight on the campus where I’ve worked for three decades.  Unfortunately a record was set for the number who ended up in the emergency room last night due to their celebrating the start of the school year a bit too aggressively.

How is it the start of a new school year can be wistful, jubilant and potentially hazardous all at the same time?  There are always plenty of mistakes to be made and plenty to learn from, though sometimes at tremendous cost.  This is a risky way to start an education.

More than New Year’s Day, the beginning of autumn represents so many turned-over new “leafs”.  We are reminded of this whenever we look at the trees all over our beautiful campus and how their leaves are turning and letting go, seemingly joyful as they make way for the next stage of growth, the slate wiped clean and ready to be scribbled on once again.

Every autumn each emerging adult comes to the university with a similar clean slate, hoping to start fresh, leaving behind what has not worked well for them in the past.  These are our future patients who we hope are open to change because they are dedicating themselves to self-transformation through knowledge and discipline.

It is a true privilege, as a college health doc, to participate in our students’ transition to become autonomous critical thinkers striving to better the world as compassionate global citizens.  Their rich colors deepen when they let go to fly wherever the wind may next take them.

We who remain rooted in place celebrate each new beginning, knowing we nurture the hoped-for transformation…

…as long as we can keep them out of the emergency room.

 

irresistiblewwu

 

wwu11147

 

 

The World Too Beautiful

barnstormingblog6 Comments

sunset922185

 

shuksan7

 

sunset626181

 

sisters76184

 

sunrise99185

 

O world, I cannot hold thee close enough!
Thy winds, thy wide grey skies!
Thy mists, that roll and rise!
Thy woods, this autumn day, that ache and sag
And all but cry with color! That gaunt crag
To crush! To lift the lean of that black bluff!
World, World, I cannot get thee close enough!

Long have I known a glory in it all,
But never knew I this;
Here such a passion is
As stretcheth me apart,– Lord, I do fear
Thou’st made the world too beautiful this year;
My soul is all but out of me,– let fall
No burning leaf; prithee, let no bird call.
~Edna St. Vincent Millay “God’s World”

 

northcascades

 

sunset922184

 

Oh, earth, you’re too wonderful for anybody to realize you. 
Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it? – every, every minute? 
I’m ready to go back. I should have listened to you. That’s all human beings are!
Just blind people.
~Thornton Wilder, from Emily’s monologue in Our Town

 

mapleview

 

Let me not wear blinders through my days.
Let me see and hear and feel it all even when it seems too much to bear.

Lord,  prepare me to be so whelmed at your world, that
Heaven itself will be familiar, and not that far,
Just round the corner.

 

bakernatpark2

 

clouds912186

 

barn92218

Recovering The Lost

barnstormingblog5 Comments

noblesseeye1

 

noblesse8141

 

septleaves

 

chickadee1

 

The songs of small birds fade away
into the bushes after sundown,
the air dry, sweet with goldenrod.
Beside the path, suddenly, bright asters
flare in the dusk. The aged voices
of a few crickets thread the silence.
It is a quiet I love, though my life
too often drives me through it deaf.
Busy with costs and losses, I waste
the time I have to be here—a time
blessed beyond my deserts, as I know,
if only I would keep aware. The leaves
rest in the air, perfectly still.

I would like them to rest in my mind
as still, as simply spaced. As I approach,
the sorrel filly looks up from her grazing,
poised there, light on the slope
as a young apple tree. A week ago
I took her away to sell, and failed
to get my price, and brought her home
again. Now in the quiet I stand
and look at her a long time, glad
to have recovered what is lost
in the exchange of something for money. 
~Wendell Berry “The Sorrel Filly”

 

noblessesunset

 

 

I am reminded at the end of a long work week in town
-when it is dark and wet and cold
and chores aren’t done yet
when horses are waiting to be fed-
of the value of moments spent
with long-lashed eyes, wind-swept manes, and velvet muzzles.

True, it appears to be time and money wasted.
But for a farmer,
not all gold is preserved in a lock box.

Golden treasure can have
four hooves, a tail, with a rumbling greeting
asking if I’d somehow gotten lost
since I’m a little later than usual
and they were a bit concerned I’d forgotten them.

I remember then where home is
and how easy it is to wander from the path
that always leads me back here.

 

homertony

 

noblesse11316

 

goldenoctmorn6

Memorizing End of Summer Light

barnstormingblog4 Comments

twinlayers

 

fallyard1

 

emptychairs

 

For today, I will memorize
the two trees now in end-of-summer light

and the drifts of wood asters as the yard slopes away toward
the black pond, blue

dragonflies
in the clouds that shine and float there, as if risen

from the bottom, unbidden. Now, just over the fern—
quick—a glimpse of it,

the plume, a fox-tail’s copper, as the dog runs in ovals and eights,
chasing scent.

The yard is a waiting room. I have my chair. You, yours.

The hawk has its branch in the pine.

White petals ripple in the quiet light. 
~Margaret Gibson from “Solitudes”

 

ferndaisies

 

hawkwheeling

 

redhawk

 

geese913

 

roadeast921171

 

I want to memorize it all before it changes:
the shift of sun from north to south
balances on our east- west road at equinox.

The flow of geese overhead, honking and waving farewell,
hawks’ screams in the firs,
dragonflies trapped in the barn light fixtures
several generations of coyotes hollering at dusk.

The koi pond quiets with cooler nights,
hair thickens on horses, cats and dogs,
dying back of the garden vines to reveal what lies unharvested beneath.

We part again, Summer –
your gifts were endless
until you ended.

I sit silenced and brooding, waiting for what comes next.

 

tony918

 

homer918

 

punkinslyinginwait

 

maplecorgi

 

bench