Month: September 2024

The Oldest Tree

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Lately, when I awake desolate
feeling half-swamped
by runaway currents I name—
dread, for my children, and theirs,
and this planet—I backstroke
through time to rest my palms
against the delicate skin
of the gingko tree, the one
and only, in my home town.
Rooted in siltish sand,
come autumn, it flaunted
10,000 golden fans:
a waving descendant my uncle said,
of the oldest tree
to inhabit the earth. Memory
replays three fluting sighs
of a mourning dove, high in the canopy,
that vast fretwork alive again
with rustling endearments—yet
ghostly, too, as his unseen hand
almost rocks my skiff of a self.
~Laurie Klein “Lately, when I awake desolate”

So many reasons to awake in the night,
eyes wide open, searching the dark seas of trouble
for some sign of hope
for calm and peace in this stormy world.

Rocked to sleep again, I float among abundant
golden gingko leaves, each waving like a sail in the breeze,
before it tumbles, swirling, to the ground, forming
deeply cushioned and comforting pools of yellow.

Navigating these brutal times, desperate to
anchor within some safer harbor – I treasure
the old ginkgo as it reaches over each cherished child
with its golden cloak of love and protection.

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The Sweetness in Ripening

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How joyful to be together, alone
as when we first were joined
in our little house by the river
long ago, except that now we know

each other, as we did not then;
and now instead of two stories fumbling
to meet, we belong to one story
that the two, joining, made. And now

we touch each other with the tenderness
of mortals, who know themselves:
how joyful to feel the heart quake

at the sight of a grandmother,
old friend in the morning light,
beautiful in her blue robe!
~Wendell Berry “The Blue Robe” from New Collected Poems

Our hair turns white with our ripening
as though to fly away in some
coming wind, bearing the seed
of what we know. It was bitter to learn
that we come to death as we come
to love, bitter to face
the just and solving welcome
that death prepares. But that is bitter
only to the ignorant, who pray
it will not happen. Having come
the bitter way to better prayer, we have
the sweetness of ripening. How sweet
to know you by the signs of this world!
~Wendell Berry from “Ripening”

My husband and I have spent 43 years of late summer evenings together – much like this one – breathing in the smell of ripening cornfields and freshly mowed silage grass lying in windrows waiting to be picked up for winter forage.   

Just down the road is the smaller farm we first bought when we wished to leave the city behind for a new life amid quieter surroundings. 

The seedling trees my husband planted there are now a thick grove and effective windbreak from the bitter howling northeasters we endured. Our oldest son and his family live in that farm house now, moving home after more than a decade of mission work in Japan.

There is such sweetness knowing the first home we owned together is home for two of our grandchildren.

Our three children were raised on this road and they strolled these roads with us many times, before flying far away for their life’s work. My husband and I continue our walk together, just the two of us, pondering how the passage of time could be so swift that our hair has turned white.

We are going to seed when it was only yesterday we were so young.

Indeed we have ripened before we’re feeling ready. It is bitter sweetness relinquishing the youth we once knew, to face a future we can never know.

It is the mystery that keeps us coming back, walking the same steps those younger legs once did, admiring the same setting sun, smelling the same late summer smells.  But we are not the same as we were, having progressed to a fruitfulness God intended all along.

Ripening and readying, our seed now flies with the wind.

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So Rare a Grace

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…we know what is coming behind the crocus…
the great thing is that the corner has been turned.
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 from God in the Dock

In the high woods that crest our hills,
Upon a steep, rough slope of forest ground,
Where few flowers grow, sweet blooms today I found
Of the Autumn Crocus, blowing pale and fair.
Dim falls the sunlight there;
And a mild fragrance the lone thicket fills.

Languidly curved, the long white stems
Their purple flowers’ gold treasure scarce display:
Lost were their leaves since in the distant spring,

Their February sisters showed so gay.
Roses of June, ye too have followed fleet!
Forsaken now, and shaded as by thought,
As by the human shade of thought and dreams,
They bloom ‘mid the dark wood, whose air has wrought
With what soft nights and mornings of still dew!
Into their slender petals that clear hue,
Like paleness in fresh cheeks; a thing
On earth, I vowed, ne’er grew
More delicately pure, more shyly sweet.

Child of the pensive autumn woods!
So lovely, though thou dwell obscure and lone,
And though thy flush and gaiety be gone;
Say, among flowers of the sad, human mind,
Where shall I ever find
So rare a grace? in what shy solitudes?
~Robert Laurence Binyon “Autumn Crocus”

The emergence of autumn crocus is unexpected,
surprising even when I know where the bulbs hide
in the shade of spent peony bushes.

They lie waiting beneath of the surface of our waning summer dreams,
triggered by retreating light from above,
summoned forth from cooling soil
to remind us summer’s end
is not the end of them or us.

A luminous gift of hope and grace
borne from a humble bulb;
plain and only soil-adorned.

In a hurry, unfurling on a pale leggy stem,
the tender lavender petals reveal golden crowns of saffron,
brazenly blooming as all else is dying back.

In the end, they quickly wilt, deeply bruised and purple –
our lives made manifest
as they fall defeated, inglorious, and frail,
melting back to dust.

Yet we are assured – these blossoms remind us –
they will rise again,
as will we.

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Swinging From the Rafters

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The porch swing hangs fixed in a morning sun
that bleaches its gray slats, its flowered cushion
whose flowers have faded, like those of summer,
and a small brown spider has hung out her web
on a line between porch post and chain
so that no one may swing without breaking it.
She is saying it’s time that the swinging were done with,
time that the creaking and pinging and popping
that sang through the ceiling were past,
time now for the soft vibrations of moths,
the wasp tapping each board for an entrance,
the cool dewdrops to brush from her work
every morning, one world at a time.
~Ted Kooser “Porch Swing in September” from Flying at Night

We build our little lives so carefully, strand by strand,
one world at a time;
planned and choreographed and anticipated,
and all it takes is a creaky swing to pull it to shreds.

So we rebuild once again, spinning and creating web designs,
believing we belong because it is that time of year.

Everything around us is changing, swinging from the rafters –
who pays attention to how we’re left hanging?

We keep trying.
We keep trusting we have a place here, still weaving connections.
We keep trying to make the world a little more beautiful and habitable.

For everyone belongs, no matter who we are…

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The Light That’s Left Them

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Now’s a good time, before the night comes on,
To praise the loyalty of the vase of flowers
Gracing the parlor table, and the bowl of oranges,
And the book with freckled pages resting on the tablecloth.
To remark how these items aren’t conspiring
To pack their bags and move to a place
Where stillness appears to more advantage.
No plan for a heaven above, beyond, or within,
Whose ever-blooming bushes are rustling
In a sea breeze at this very moment.
These things are focusing all their attention
On holding fast as time washes around them.
The flowers in the vase won’t come again.
The page of the book beside it, the edge turned down,
Will never be read again for the first time.
The light from the window’s angled.
The sun’s moving on. That’s why the people
Who live in the house are missing.
They’re all outside enjoying the light that’s left them.
Lucky for them to find when they return
These silent things just as they were.
Night’s coming on and they haven’t been frightened off.
They haven’t once dreamed of going anywhere.
~Carl Dennis, “Still Life” from Ranking the Wishes

Wendell Berry – Another Day Sabbath Poems

The transformation of objects in space,
or objects in time,
To objects outside either, but tactile, still precise…
It’s always the same problem –
Nothing’s more abstract, more unreal,
than what we actually see.
The job is to make it otherwise.
~Charles Wright from “Basic Dialogue” in Appalachia

Annie Dillard – Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

Let us treasure the Light that is left to us, to dwell outside in its midst as night is coming.

Meanwhile, a still life exists within, unchanging, real, tangible, not going anywhere.

Stillness is always there if we decide to come in as the dark descends.

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The Running Down of Life’s Clock

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sphere of pillowed sky
one faceless gathering of blue...

… I’m tethered, and devoted
to your raw and lonely bloom

my lavish need to drink
your world of crowded cups to fill.
~Tara Bray “hydrangea” from Image Journal

Like in old cans of paint the last green hue,
these leaves are sere and rough and dull-complected
behind the blossom clusters in which blue
is not so much displayed as it’s reflected;

They do reflect it imprecise and teary,
as though they’d rather have it go away,
and just like faded, once blue stationery,
they’re tinged with yellow, violet and gray;

As in an often laundered children’s smock,
cast off, its usefulness now all but over,
one senses running down a small life’s clock.

Yet suddenly the blue revives, it seems,
and in among these clusters one discovers
a tender blue rejoicing in the green.
~Rainer Maria Rilke “Blue Hydrangea” Translation by Bernhard Frank

Dwelling within a mosaic of dying colors,
these petals fold and collapse
under the weight of the sky’s tears.

This hydrangea bears a rainbow of hues,
once-vibrant promises of blue
now fading to rusts and grays.

I know what this is like:
the running out of the clock,
feeling the limits of vitality.

Withering and drying,
I’m drawn, thirsty for the beauty,
to this waning artist’s palette.

To quench my thirst:
from an open cup, an invitation,
an everlasting visual sacrament.

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Throwing Away the Key

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When we look long at one another,
we soften, we relent, listen,

might forgive. We allow for silence
—and when we see each other,

are known, and in that moment
might change

though nothing has moved
or been spoken.

There are some who say
the walls cannot be broken,

but suddenly we are in a free place,
and the fields

that extend from its center
stretch for miles

as if out of the pupil and the iris
of that momentary kingdom.
~Annie Lighthart “When We Look” from Pax

The weasel was stunned into stillness as he was emerging from beneath an enormous shaggy wild rose bush four feet away. I was stunned into stillness twisted backward on the tree trunk. Our eyes locked, and someone threw away the key.

Our look was as if two lovers, or deadly enemies, met unexpectedly on an overgrown path when each had been thinking of something else: a clearing blow to the gut.

It was also a bright blow to the brain, or a sudden beating of brains, with all the charge and intimate grate of rubbed balloons. It emptied our lungs. It felled the forest, moved the fields, and drained the pond; the world dismantled and tumbled into that black hole of eyes.

If you and I looked at each other that way, our skulls would split and drop to our shoulders. But we don’t. We keep our skulls. So.
~Annie Dillard from “Living Like Weasels”

The pupil and iris are a portal to our thoughts, our dreams, our passions and our fears. They are simultaneously window and mirror, revealing feelings we try to keep to ourselves.

Locking eyes can be one of the most thrilling, stomach-butterflies, ecstatic moments of connection. It can be tender, loving, reassuring and encouraging.

Or it can be intimidating and terrifying. I tend to avoid eye contact when passing a stranger on a dark street, or when engaged in a very stressful public interaction. I don’t want to reveal my insecurity, vulnerability, or worry through direct eye contact. While studying primates in Africa, I learned never to look a baboon in the eye as it can communicate aggression and instigate an attack.

So instead, I learned to look at my feet.

I’d much rather lock eyes and learn everything I can about you. I want to dive deep into who you are, breaking down the walls and dismantle the barriers that keep us apart from one another. Then I’m letting you in too. The black holes of our inner universe.

After all, this is preparation when we see the face of God and allow Him to lock into our eyes, knowing our truth.

No keys needed forevermore.

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Pure State of Light

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How hard it is to take September
straight—not as a harbinger
of something harder.

Merely like suds in the air, cool scent
scrubbed clean of meaning—or innocent
of the cold thing coldly meant.

How hard the heart tugs at the end
of summer, and longs to haul it in
when it flies out of hand

at the prompting of the first mild breeze.
It leaves us by degrees
only, but for one who sees

summer as an absolute,
Pure State of Light and Heat, the height
to which one cannot raise a doubt,

as soon as one leaf’s off the tree
no day following can fall free
of the drift of melancholy.
~Mary Jo Salter “Absolute September”

Only nine days left of summer –
I search the skies for what might be left of it.

The mornings lighten later,
evenings darken sooner.

How can I not sadden at the change?

Yet this is where I am in life,
this time of bringing inside the garden and orchard
to savor and salvage before the rains come.

The light leaves behind ripened fruit of foraged memories;
in the darkening, its purity sweetens over time.

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One Season Too Many

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The foliage has been losing its freshness
through the month of August,
and here and there a yellow leaf shows itself
like the first gray hair amidst the locks
of a beauty who has seen one season too many.
~Oliver Wendell Holmes from Songs of Many Seasons 1862-1874

I remember a day before I turned 30 when a barber pulled a gray hair from my head and handed it to me.  “Here you go, ” she said,  “this is only the beginning.”

Indeed.  My mother was totally gray by 32 and my hope was to hold onto my mousy brown hair until at least 50.

It didn’t seem possible I could be losing my “freshness” so young as 29, but over the next 41 years, there is an exponential increase in the number of gray (and white!) hairs, and I must face facts.

Ages ago on my 45th birthday, as I was walking down the sidewalk at work, a middle-aged woman stopped me mid-stride and asked me what brand hair coloring I used. I was taken completely off-guard.  All I could respond was that I used no hair coloring other than what God Himself applied. She laughed and said she would have to keep looking then, as she was hoping I could direct her to a hair color that would make her hair look like “champagne” just like mine.  

I floated for three days on that thought alone.

Champagne. So I wasn’t “one season too many” after all. I was “well-aged.”

I sympathize with the not-so-fresh foliage on our farm in late summer. In anticipation of autumn, some of the yellow leaves simply give up and let go, flying in the wind to their final resting place, even in early September.  Others decide to hang on until the bitter end ~yellowing, goldening, reddening and browning in a shimmering kaleidoscope of exhausted pigment.

For now, I am one of those hanging on, quaking at times in the breezes, bedraggled in the drizzle, tattered on the edges, with some age spots here and there. I’m determined to make the best of the gray and am proud of every strand I’ve earned over the years and hope to earn a bunch more before I’m done.

After all…it isn’t really gray. It is champagne, well aged, with bubbles sparkling in the sun.

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Edges So Sharp

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The ghosts swarm.
They speak as one 
person. Each
loves you. Each
has left something undone.

Today’s edges
are so sharp

they might cut
anything that moved.

The way a lost
word

will come back
unbidden.

You’re not interested
in it now,

only
in knowing
where it’s been.
~Rae Armantrout from “Unbidden”

I wish for you the blessing
of a room where strangers sit
breathing unashamed
into a chosen silence

Not the gasping breath
of travelers on a crowded plane
or the tenuous wheeze
of the waiting room

May you know the power
of those who have decided
to submit to the silence
to enter the mystery
be consumed by it
and emerge transformed

May you belong among those
who inhale the stillness
as if it is keeping us
because it is
keeping us alive
~Bethany Lee, “To Enter the Mystery” from Etude for Belonging: poems for practicing courage and hope

The grace of God means something like:
Here is your life.
You might never have been, but you are…
Here is the world.
Beautiful and terrible things will happen.
Don’t be afraid.
I am with you.
~Frederick Buechner in “Wishful Thinking and later” in Beyond Words

Twenty three years ago,
a day started with bright sun above
and ended in tears and bloodshed below.

This is a day for recollection;
we live out remembrance of
the torrential red that flowed that day;

Two decades later, far-away streets still course
with the blood of innocents.

What have we learned from all this?

That terrible day’s edges were so sharp
we all bled and still bear the scars.

So do not be afraid: we are able to still breathe and weep.

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