Month: October 2022

Is There Anybody There?

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‘Is there anybody there?’ said the Traveller,
   Knocking on the moonlit door;
And his horse in the silence champed the grasses
   Of the forest’s ferny floor:
And a bird flew up out of the turret,
   Above the Traveller’s head:
And he smote upon the door again a second time;
   ‘Is there anybody there?’ he said.
But no one descended to the Traveller;
   No head from the leaf-fringed sill
Leaned over and looked into his grey eyes,
   Where he stood perplexed and still.
But only a host of phantom listeners
   That dwelt in the lone house then
Stood listening in the quiet of the moonlight
   To that voice from the world of men:
Stood thronging the faint moonbeams on the dark stair,
   That goes down to the empty hall,
Hearkening in an air stirred and shaken
   By the lonely Traveller’s call.
And he felt in his heart their strangeness,
   Their stillness answering his cry,
While his horse moved, cropping the dark turf,
   ’Neath the starred and leafy sky;
For he suddenly smote on the door, even
   Louder, and lifted his head:—
‘Tell them I came, and no one answered,
   That I kept my word,’ he said.
Never the least stir made the listeners,
   Though every word he spake
Fell echoing through the shadowiness of the still house
   From the one man left awake:
Ay, they heard his foot upon the stirrup,
   And the sound of iron on stone,
And how the silence surged softly backward,
   When the plunging hoofs were gone.
~Walter de la Mare “The Listeners”

Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with that person, and they with me.
Revelation 3:20

This poetic tale of a mysterious traveller, knocking but getting no response from a house of silent apparitions, has been cited as an appropriate ghost story for Halloween. This is a day of trick or treat knocks on doors everywhere.

I read the poem differently: to me this describes the return of Christ to retrieve us on the final day, just as He said He would.

If we are the phantom listeners, ignoring His knocks on our door despite hearing His announcement of arrival, we have lost the opportunity to open the door and welcome Him in.

Is anybody there?

It isn’t enough to be just a listener. We must respond and answer the door, welcoming the Son of Man who is doing exactly as He promised.

Let Him in. There can be no better treat.

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Pearls of Early Dew

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October is the treasurer of the year,
And all the months pay bounty to her store;
The fields and orchards still their tribute bear,
And fill her brimming coffers more and more.
But she, with youthful lavishness,
Spends all her wealth in gaudy dress,
And decks herself in garments bold
Of scarlet, purple, red, and gold.

She heedeth not how swift the hours fly,
But smiles and sings her happy life along;
She only sees above a shining sky;
She only hears the breezes’ voice in song.
Her garments trail the woodlands through,
And gather pearls of early dew
That sparkle, till the roguish Sun
Creeps up and steals them every one.

But what cares she that jewels should be lost,
When all of Nature’s bounteous wealth is hers?
Though princely fortunes may have been their cost,
Not one regret her calm demeanor stirs.
Whole-hearted, happy, careless, free,
She lives her life out joyously,
Nor cares when Frost stalks o’er her way
And turns her auburn locks to gray.
~Paul Laurence Dunbar “October”

Frost arrives this week
as pearls of dew freeze into place, dangling –
strings of liquid gems transform to icy diamonds.

A rich and mellow October gives way
to crisp and colorless November –
a sorrowful undressing.

All fades to gray; so do I.

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The Chance of One Sweet Last Hour

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Bending above the spicy woods which blaze,
Arch skies so blue they flash, and hold the sun
Immeasurably far; the waters run
Too slow, so freighted are the river-ways
With gold of elms and birches from the maze
Of forests. Chestnuts, clicking one by one,
Escape from satin burs; her fringes done,
The gentian spreads them out in sunny days,
And, like late revelers at dawn, the chance
Of one sweet, mad, last hour, all things assail,
And conquering, flush and spin; while, to enhance
The spell, by sunset door, wrapped in a veil
Of red and purple mists, the summer, pale,
Steals back alone for one more song and dance.
~Helen Hunt Jackson “October”


And how like a field is the whole sky now
that the maples have shed their leaves, too.
It makes us believers—stationed in groups,
leaning on rakes, looking into space. We rub blisters
over billows of leaf smoke. Or stand alone,
bagging gold for the cold days to come.
~David Baker from “Neighbors in October”

A touch of cold in the Autumn night—
I walked abroad,
And saw the ruddy moon lean over a hedge
Like a red-faced farmer.
I did not stop to speak, but nodded…
~T.E. Hulme from “Autumn”

We make a dwelling in the evening air, 
In which being there together is enough.
~Wallace Stevens from "Final Soliloquy of the Interior Paramour"

No other time of year is quite like the end of October. God prepares us for the long haul of winter gray by giving us one last sweet hour of golden memories to bag up as keepsakes for the dark cold nights ahead.

The air is now pristine after a wind and rain storm yesterday. I am finally seeing the golden glow of October.

As Robert Frost wrote, “nothing gold can stay” so I bid this gilded air goodbye for another year. I nod in recognition at the rising moon and wave at bare branches dancing leafless in the wind and celebrate the last sweet hours of October.

It’s now time to dwell together, huddled and cuddled, in the chill of the autumn evening air.

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Spark of Consciousness

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This was our pretty gray kitten,
hence her name; who was born
in our garage and stayed nearby
her whole life. There were allergies;
so she was, as they say,
an outside cat.
But she loved us. For years,
she was at our window.
Sometimes, a paw on the screen
as if to want in, as if
to be with us
the best she could.
She would be on the deck,
at the sliding door.
She would be on the small
sill of the window in the bathroom.
She would be at the kitchen
window above the sink.
We’d go to the living room;
anticipating that she’d be there, too,
hop up, look in.
She’d be on the roof,
she’d be in a nearby tree.
She’d be listening
through the wall to our family life.
She knew where we were,
and she knew where we were going
and would meet us there.
Little spark of consciousness,
calm kitty eyes staring
through the window.

After the family broke,
and when the house was about to sell,
I walked around it for a last look.
Under the eaves, on the ground,
there was a path worn in the dirt,
tight against the foundation —
small padded feet, year after year,
window to window.

When we moved, we left her
to be fed by the people next door.
Months after we were gone,
they found her in the bushes
and buried her by the fence.
So many years after,
I can’t get her out of my mind.
~Philip F. Deaver, “Gray” from How Men Pray

Our pets witness the routine of our lives. They know when the food bowl remains empty too long, or when no one offers their lap to stroke their fur.

They sit silently waiting and wondering, a little spark of consciousness, aware of our family life. They know when things aren’t right at home. They hear the raised voices and they hear the strained silences.

Sometimes a farm cat moves on, looking for a place with more consistency and better feeding grounds. Most often they stick close to what they know, even if it isn’t entirely a happy or welcoming place. After all, it’s home; that’s where they stay, through thick and thin.

When my family broke as my parents split, after the furniture was removed and the dust of over thirty five years of marriage swept up, I wondered if our cat and dog had seen it coming before we did. They had been peering through the window at our lives, gauging what amount of spilled-out love might be left over for them.

I still can’t get them out of my mind – they, like me, became children of divorce. We all knew when we left behind the only home we had ever known, we could never truly feel at home again.

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The Misty Mountains Cold

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Far over the misty mountains cold
To dungeons deep and caverns old
We must away, ere break of day,
To find our long-forgotten gold.
~J.R.R. Tolkien from “Far over the misty mountains” in The Hobbit

The breeze—the breath of God—is still—
And the mist upon the hill,
Shadowy—shadowy—yet unbroken,
Is a symbol and a token—
How it hangs upon the trees,
A mystery of mysteries!
~Edgar Allen Poe from Spirits of the Dead

Photo above by Joel De Waard

Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow.
What is your life?
You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes.
James 4:14

I pray that the breath of God would blow away the veils of mist and mystery in my life. The reality is – so much is hidden from me, I must proceed on faith alone without always seeing where I am going.

God has made it clear, we perceive Him through a glass darkly, a dim reflection. The mists of mystery are transient and shall be pulled back in the fullness of time. In the meantime, I gaze in wonder at what appears now only in shadow, waiting for that amazing moment when all shall be revealed.

photo above by Joel De Waard

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The Sea Inside

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The first woman who ever wept
was appalled at what stung
her eyes and ran down her cheeks.
Saltwater. Seawater.
How was it possible?
Hadn’t she and the man
spent many days moving
upland to where the grass
flourished, where the stream
quenched their thirst with sweet water?
How could she have carried these sea drops
as if they were precious seeds;
where could she have stowed them?
She looked at the watchful gazelles
and the heavy-lidded frogs;
she looked at glass-eyed birds
and nervous, black-eyed mice.
None of them wept, not even the fish
that dripped in her hands when she caught them.
Not even the man. Only she
carried the sea inside her body.
~Lisel Mueller “Tears” in Alive Together

From weeping salty seeds or leaking a flood of amnion,
we begin life afloat in our very own sea water pool
and someday depart amid tears of grief flowing over us.

We left behind the sweet waters of the garden
desperate for saline soothing and healing of our wounds.

Destined to bring salt to the rest of the world,
we flavor through our flowing tears, if that’s what it takes.
From the beginning, immersed in salt water,
all our days we seek healing as we weep in joy and sorrow.

That’s what it takes.

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A Love for Lightness

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…I have been younger in October
than in all the months of spring
walnut and may leaves the color
of shoulders at the end of summer
a month that has been to the mountain
and become light there
the long grass lies pointing uphill
even in death for a reason
that none of us knows…

my love is for lightness
of touch foot feather
the day is yet one more yellow leaf
and without turning I kiss the light
by an old well on the last of the month
gathering wild rose hips
in the sun
~W. S. Merwin from “The Love of October”

A wind gusts through shedding branches
stripping them bare
and carrying the leaves to fields
far away, to a diverse gathering
they have never known before:
chestnut, cherry, birch, walnut, apple, alder,
maple, parrotia, pear, oak, poplar, cottonwood
suddenly all sharing the same fate and grave,
each wearing a color of its own,
falling, falling, soon to blend with others.

There is an exquisite lightness in letting go
of all that feels familiar and safe,
for reasons none of us can actually comprehend.

Can’t help “falling” in love and falling in leaf…

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Fifty-Four Whimsical Flavors

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The circus train made an ice cream stop
At the fifty-two-flavor ice cream stand.
The animals all got off the train
And walked right up to the ice cream man.
“I’ll take Vanilla,” yelled the gorilla.
“I’ll take Chocolate,” shouted the ocelot.
   “I’ll take the Strawberry,” chirped the canary.
      “Rocky Road,” croaked the toad.
         “Lemon and Lime,” growled the lion.
      Said the ice cream man, “‘Til I see a dime.
   You’ll get no ice cream of mine.”
Then the animals snarled and screeched and growled
And whinnied and whimpered and hooted and howled
And gobbled up the whole ice cream stand,
All fifty-two flavors
(Fifty-three with Ice Cream Man).
~Shel Silverstein “Ice Cream Stop” from Falling Up

photo by Tomomi Gibson
toad picture by Josh Scholten

You won’t hear me croak, hoot, howl, whimper, whine, screech, or even growl. Instead, I won’t stop grinning…

“Tillamook Mudslide,” I confide. It makes me a happy primate.

It’s flavor #54 and ever so much better tasting than even the Ice Cream Man…

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A Cozy Rain

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The best kind of rain, of course, is a cozy rain. This is the kind of rain that falls on a day when you’d just as soon stay in bed a little longer, write letters or read a good book by the fire, take early tea with hot scones and jam, and look out the streaked window with complacency.
~ Susan Allen Toth from England for All Seasons

Cozy rains typically don’t happen on weekdays.  There are always things to do, places to be, people to impress, rain or shine.  On weekdays rain tends to be a drag-us-down,  smotheringly gray inconvenience of wet shoes, damp jackets, impossibly limp hair in school and work place.

But on a Saturday?  The same drops from the same cloudy skies become a comfy, tuck-me-in-once-again and snuggle-down kind of rain.  There is no schedule to follow, no structured day, no required attendance, no need to even poke my nose out the door (unless living on a farm with hungry critters in the barn).

This is why most northwest natives are rainophilics, anticipating this quiet time of year with great longing.  We are granted permission by precipitation to be complacent, slowed down, contemplative, and yes, even lazy…
*
*
*
Okay, enough of that.  Gotta get up, get going, laundry to do, house to clean, barn to muck out, bills to pay, meals to prepare.

Maybe in the morning the rain will still be falling and there will be a chance to sit with hot tea cup in hand after church, gazing through streaked windows. Cozy rain all day on a Sabbath Sunday.  With scones.  And jam.
Bliss…
that is, until Monday.

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Moving from Loneliness to Love

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It’s the immemorial feelings
I like the best: hunger, thirst,
their satisfaction; work-weariness,
earned rest; the falling again
from loneliness to love;
the green growth the mind takes
from the pastures in March;
the gayety in the stride 
of a good team of Belgian mares
that seems to shudder from me
through all my ancestry.
~Wendell Berry “Goods”

photo by Joel De Waard
photo by Joel De Waard

It seems unlikely anyone would say
I didn’t work hard enough all those years.
After all, I come from a long line of human work-horses
and I know it takes sweat and tears, and sometimes bleeding.

Even so, I know I could have done more all those years.

I could have thrown myself more fully into the pull on the tugs,
could have shouldered the yoke with more enthusiasm,
could have bent down low with unbroken determination.

You might say somewhere I lost the gayety in my stride,
and you would be right — I ended up trudging through my day,
bruised from running into too many submerged rocks,
bumping into immoveable tree stumps and tripping on hidden roots,
falling into deep furrows of long and lonely post-midnight hours.

You might even say eventually the knowledge of a job well-done
seemed to lay deeper than my plow could ever reach.

When it came time for me to shrug out of the yoke
and shake off the harness,
I knew others die in their harness,
never to rest easy on this earth.

I am unsure what to do next with the seasons I have left.
Even so, I love the wondering and wandering,
almost as much as I love the feel of the sun on my unyoked withers.


photo by Joel De Waard
photo by Joel De Waard
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