What’s Left Undone Will Wait

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To rest before the sheaves are bound,
toss the scythes aside, bare the feet and sink
into the nearest haystack, release
the undone task and consent to sleep
while the brightest hour burns an arc
across its stretch of sky:
this is the body’s prayer, mid-day angelus
whispered in mingled breath while the limbs
stretch in thanksgiving and the body turns
toward the beloved.

This is the prayer of trust:
what’s left undone will wait. The unattended
child, the uncut acre, cracked wheel, broken
fence that are occupations of the waking mind
soften into shadow in the semi-darkness
of dream. All shall be well. Little depends on us.
The turning world is held and borne in love.
We give good measure in our toil and, meet and right,
obey the body when it calls us to rest.
~Marilyn Chandler McEntyre “Noon Rest (after Millet: 1890)” from “The Color of Light: Poems on Van Gogh’s Late Paintings”

Van Gogh: Noon Rest at Musée d’Orsay, Paris

Thanks to retirement, I have learned to love mid-day naps.

After forty-plus years of 10 hour work days, then awakened with calls at night, I managed to semi-thrive on minimal sleep.

Not any more.

I’ve discovered that it is possible to leave things undone, something that was never possible during doctoring and patient care. It is okay to set a task aside and think about it later. All this doesn’t come naturally to me but I’m learning.

So it is time to kick off my shoes, pull a quilt up to my chin and close my eyes, just for a little while.

All will be well. The world keeps turning, even when I’m not the one pedaling to keep it going.

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Break into Blossom

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How swiftly the strained honey
of afternoon light
flows into darkness

and the closed bud shrugs off
its special mystery
in order to break into blossom

as if what exists, exists
so that it can be lost
and become precious
~Lisel Mueller “In Passing”

Each one of us is like a swelling bud hanging heavy,
waiting on the stem —
already but not quite yet.

Such is the late afternoon light of a mid-spring day.
There is an air of mystery in a honeyed moment of illumination
knowing something more is coming.

Not just letting go of what we cannot yet understand.
Not just peering through a glass darkly.

Breaking from bud into blossom means opening fully,
glowing with ripeness,
to become part of light itself.

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A Gathered Radiance

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I am not resigned to the shutting away
Of loving hearts in the hard ground.
So it is, and so it will be, for so it has been, time out of mind:
Into the darkness they go, the wise and the lovely.  Crowned
With lilies and with laurel they go; but I am not resigned.
Lovers and thinkers, into the earth with you.
Be one with the dull, the indiscriminate dust.
A fragment of what you felt, of what you knew,
A formula, a phrase remains,—but the best is lost.
The answers quick and keen, the honest look, the laughter, the love,— They are gone.  They are gone to feed the roses. 
Elegant and curled
Is the blossom.  Fragrant is the blossom.  I know. 
But I do not approve.
More precious was the light in your eyes
Than all the roses in the world.
Down, down, down into the darkness of the grave
Gently they go, the beautiful, the tender, the kind;
Quietly they go, the intelligent, the witty, the brave.
I know.  But I do not approve.  And I am not resigned.
~Edna St. Vincent Millay “Dirge Without Music”

These hearts were woven of human joys and cares,
Washed marvelously with sorrow, swift to mirth.
The years had given them kindness. Dawn was theirs,
And sunset, and the colors of the earth.

These had seen movement, and heard music; known
Slumber and waking; loved; gone proudly friended;
Felt the quick stir of wonder; sat alone;
Touched flowers and furs and cheeks. All this is ended.

There are waters blown by changing winds to laughter
And lit by the rich skies, all day. And after,
Frost with a gesture, stays the waves that dance
And wandering loveliness. He leaves a white
Unbroken glory, a gathered radiance,
A width, a shining peace, under the night.
~Rupert Brooke “All This is Ended”

Each Memorial Day weekend without fail,
we gather with family, have lunch, reminisce,
and trek to a cemetery high above Puget Sound
to catch up with our relatives who lie there still.
Some for well over 100 years, some too recent,
some we knew and loved and miss every day,
others not so much, unknown to us
except on genealogy charts,
their names and dates and these stones
all that is left of them:

the red-haired great-grandmother who died too young,
the aunt who was eight with lymphoma,
the Yukon river boat captain,
the logger and stump farmer,
the unmarried teacher who bequeathed an oil well to her church,
the two in-laws who lie next to each other
but could not co-exist in the same room while they lived and breathed.

Yet we know each of these
(as we know ourselves and others)
was tender and kind, though flawed and broken,
was beautiful and strong, though wrinkled and frail,
was hopeful and faithful, though too soon in the ground.

We know this about them
as we know it about ourselves:
someday we too will feed roses,
the light in our eyes transformed into elegant swirls
emitting the fragrant scent of heaven.

No one asks if we approve.
Nor am I resigned to this but only know:
So it is, so it has been, so it will be.

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“They were so young” – poem written by Garrison Keillor

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Dreaming of Home

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In great deeds, something abides. 
On great fields, something stays. 
Forms change and pass; bodies disappear; 
but spirits linger, to consecrate ground for the vision-place of souls. 
And reverent men and women from afar, 
and generations that know us not and that we know not of, 
heart-drawn to see where and by whom great things were suffered and done for them, shall come to this deathless field, 
to ponder and dream; and lo!
the shadow of a mighty presence shall wrap them in its bosom, 
and the power of the vision pass into their souls. 
This is the great reward of service. 
To live, far out and on, in the life of others;
this is the mystery of the Christ,
–to give life’s best for such high sake
that it shall be found again unto life eternal.
~Major-General Joshua Chamberlain, Gettysburg, Pennsylvania 1889

The sunlight now lay over the valley perfectly still.
I went over to the graveyard beside the church
and found them under the old cedars…
I am finding it a little hard to say that I felt them resting there, but I did…

I saw that, for me, this country would always be populated
with presences and absences,
presences of absences,
the living and the dead.
The world as it is
would always be a reminder
of the world that was,
and of the world that is to come.
~Wendell Berry in Jayber Crow

A box of over 700 letters, exchanged between my parents from late 1941 to mid-1945, sat unopened for decades until last year. I started reading.

My parents barely knew each other before marrying quickly on Christmas Eve 1942 – the haste due to the uncertain future for a newly trained Second Lieutenant in the Marine Corps. They only had a few weeks together before she returned home to her rural teaching position and he readied himself to be shipped out for the island battles to come.

They had no idea they would not see each other for another 30+ months or even see each other again at all. They had no idea their marriage would fall apart 35 years later and they would reunite a decade after the divorce for five more years together.

The letters do contain the long-gone but still-familiar voices of my parents, but they are the words and worries of youngsters of 20 and 21, barely prepared for the horrors to come from war and interminable waiting. When he was fighting battles on Tarawa, Saipan, and Tinian, no letters or news would be received for a month or more, otherwise they tried to write each other daily, though with minimal news to share due to military censorship. They speak mostly of their desire for a normal life together rather than a routine centered on mailbox, pen and paper and waiting, lots and lots of waiting.

I’m not sure what I hoped to find in these letters. Perhaps I hoped for flowery romantic whisperings and the poetry of longing and loneliness. Instead I am reading plain spoken words from two people who desperately wanted to have a home together. They somehow made it through those awful years to make my sister and brother and myself possible.

Our inheritance is contained in this musty box of words bereft of poetry. But decades later my heart is moved by these letters – I carefully refold them back into their envelopes and replace them gently back in order. A six cent airmail stamp – in fact hundreds and hundreds of them – was a worthwhile investment in the future, not only for themselves and their family to come, but for generations of U.S. citizens who tend to take their freedom for granted.

Thank you, Dad and Mom, for what you gave up to make today possible.

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I hear the mountain birds
The sound of rivers singing
A song I’ve often heard
It flows through me now
So clear and so loud
I stand where I am
And forever I’m dreaming of home
I feel so alone, I’m dreaming of home

It’s carried in the air
The breeze of early morning
I see the land so fair
My heart opens wide
There’s sadness inside
I stand where I am
And forever I’m dreaming of home
I feel so alone, I’m dreaming of home

This is no foreign sky
I see no foreign light
But far away am I
From some peaceful land
I’m longing to stand
A hand in my hand
…forever I’m dreaming of home
I feel so alone, I’m dreaming of home
~Lori Barth and Philippe Rombi “I’m Dreaming of Home”

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A Delicious Drizzle

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I was enjoying everything: the rain, the path
wherever it was taking me, the earth roots
beginning to stir.
I didn’t intend to start thinking about God,
it just happened.
How God, or the gods, are invisible,
quite understandable
But holiness is visible, entirely.
It’s wonderful to walk along like that,
thought not the usual intention to reach an
answer
but merely drifting.
Like clouds that only seem weightless.
but of course are not.
Are really important.
I mean, terribly important.
Not decoration by any means.
By next week the violets will be blooming.

Anyway, this was my delicious walk in the rain.
What was it actually about?

Think about what it is that music is trying to say.
It was something like that.
~Mary Oliver “Drifting” from Blue Horses

Wet things smell stronger,
and I suppose his main regret is that
he can sniff just one at a time.
In a frenzy of delight
he runs way up the sandy road—
scored by freshets after five days
of rain. Every pebble gleams, every leaf.

When I whistle he halts abruptly
and steps in a circle,
swings his extravagant tail.
Then he rolls and rubs his muzzle
in a particular place, while the drizzle
falls without cease, and Queen Anne’s lace
and Goldenrod bend low.

The top of the logging road stands open
and light. Another day, before
hunting starts, we’ll see how far it goes,
leaving word first at home.
The footing is ambiguous.

Soaked and muddy, the dog drops,
panting, and looks up with what amounts
to a grin. It’s so good to be uphill with him,
nicely winded, and looking down on the pond.

A sound commences in my left ear
like the sound of the sea in a shell;
a downward, vertiginous drag comes with it.
Time to head home. I wait
until we’re nearly out to the main road
to put him back on the leash, and he
—the designated optimist—
imagines to the end that he is free.
~Jane Kenyon “After an Illness, Walking the Dog”

This morning’s drizzly walk
and every surface is baptized
with gentle, loving sprinkles from God.
It reminds us how visible is our holiness;
His covering grace makes us free.

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Page After Page

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Just looking at them
I grow greedy, as if they were
freshly baked loaves
waiting on their shelves
to be broken open—that one
and that—and I make my choice
in a mood of exalted luck,
browsing among them
like a cow in sweetest pasture.

For life is continuous
as long as they wait
to be read—these inked paths
opening into the future, page
after page, every book
its own receding horizon.
And I hold them, one in each hand,
a curious ballast weighting me
here to the earth.
~Linda Pastan “The Bookstall” from Carnival Evening

…for people who love books and need
To touch them, open them, browse for a while,
And find some common good––that’s why we read.
Readers and writers are two sides of the same gold coin.
You write and I read and in that moment I find
A union more perfect than any club I could join:
The simple intimacy of being one mind.
     Here in a book-filled sun-lit room below the street,
     Strangers––some living, some dead––are hoping to meet.
~Garrison Keillor 

You know who you are.

You are the person who stockpiles stacks of books
on the bedside table and next to your favorite chair.

The person who sacrifices sleep to read
just one more page.

The person who reads the cereal box when
nothing else is available near the breakfast table.

The girl who falls into an uncovered manhole
walking down a busy street while reading.

The objects of your affection may be
as precious as the Book of Kells.

or as sappy as an Archie and Jughead
comic book.

It’s the words, the words,
that keep zipping by, telegraphing

an urgent message: What’s next?
What’s next?
~Lois Edstrom “Bookworm” from Almanac of Quiet Days

Most of my life has been a reading rather than a writing life. For too many decades, I spent most of my time reading scientific and medical journals, to keep up with the changing knowledge in my profession. Even as a retired physician, I try to spend an hour a day reading medical articles but now have the time to dabble in books of memoir, biography, poetry and the occasional novel.

As a reader, I am no longer a stranger to the author or poet whose words I read. In a few instances, I’ve had the honor and privilege to meet my favorite authors in real life and to interact with them on line. Some are friends on the page as well as in my life.

I am no longer a stranger to many of you who read my words here on Barnstorming every day – I have been able to meet a number of you over the years. There is no greater privilege than to share our stories with one another.

No matter where I discover books – in an independent bookstore, in a little free library standing along the roadside, or inside the world’s treasured libraries filled with books of antiquity – I seek out the privileged sanctuary of turning page after page written by those who graciously give me a glimpse of their inner world.

If librarians were honest,
they would say, No one
spends time here without being
changed. Maybe you should
go home. While you still can.
~Joseph Mills from “If Librarians Were Honest”

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Blurring of the Seasons

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Van Gogh – “Avenue of Plane Trees near Arles Station”

After Van Gogh
Things are growing strange these days,
like Van Gogh’s yellow trees. Oh, do not
be surprised by these yellow immensities,
how out of proportion things in the picture seem.
What you see in a way makes sense:
the enormous, barren trees eclipsing
the unimportant buildings at Arles station,
the people all small, shadow-like, cast
to the side. Perhaps Van Gogh should have
left us out entirely, but then who would
be left to blame for the strange blurring
of the seasons in the forefront, the way
summer bleeds into autumn, the forests
burning deep into the winter, those winters
where the snow piled so high, we were all
nearly buried alive. Soon we’ll vanish,
and no picture will even exist—unless,
unless someone will answer (who will dare
to answer), where in the world is spring?
~Jodi Hollander “Avenue of Plane Trees”

Who might dare to answer: where in the world is spring?
Who can know with any certainty?
Sometimes it feels like time skips forward
and a whole season is left behind.

The signs of the seasons can blur so profoundly, there is no telling whether it is fall or spring without a calendar. Are those trees just leafing out or trying to shed? Is the sunset’s golden glow from October light or April?

I can’t feel the movement of the earth under my feet. It needs to slow its spin on its axis and lengthen its orbital oval trip around the sun so I have more minutes in the day and more weeks in a year.

But, of course, that would make a huge mess of things.

It is as it is.
It is meant to be this way.
Though it may be blurry to me,
it is clear and good and intentional to God.
He dares to answer as only He knows…

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Write What You Wish

barnstormingblog4 Comments

I loved you before I was born.
It doesn’t make sense, I know.

I saw your eyes before I had eyes to see.
And I’ve lived longing 
for your ever look ever since.
That longing entered time as this body. 
And the longing grew as this body waxed.
And the longing grows as the body wanes.
The longing will outlive this body.

I loved you before I was born.
It doesn’t make sense, I know.

Long before eternity, I caught a glimpse
of your neck and shoulders, your ankles and toes.
And I’ve been lonely for you from that instant.
That loneliness appeared on earth as this body. 
And my share of time has been nothing 
but your name outrunning my ever saying it clearly. 
Your face fleeing my ever
kissing it firmly once on the mouth.

In longing, I am most myself, rapt,
my lamp mortal, my light 
hidden and singing. 

I give you my blank heart.
Please write on it
what you wish. 
~Li-Young Lee “I loved you before I was born”

i carry your heart with me(i carry it in
my heart)i am never without it(anywhere
i go you go,my dear;and whatever is done
by only me is your doing,my darling)
i fear
no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want
no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true)
and it’s you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you
here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows
higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that’s keeping the stars apart
i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)
~e.e cummings “[i carry your heart with me (i carry it in]”

if everything happens that can’t be done
(and anything’s righter
than books
could plan)
the stupidest teacher will almost guess
(with a run
skip
around we go yes)
there’s nothing as something as one

one hasn’t a why or because or although
(and buds know better
than books
don’t grow)
one’s anything old being everything new
(with a what
which
around we come who)
one’s everyanything so

so world is a leaf so a tree is a bough
(and birds sing sweeter
than books
tell how)
so here is away and so your is a my
(with a down
up
around again fly)
forever was never till now

now i love you and you love me
(and books are shuter
than books
can be)
and deep in the high that does nothing but fall
(with a shout
each
around we go all)
there’s somebody calling who’s we

we’re anything brighter than even the sun
(we’re everything greater
than books
might mean)
we’re everyanything more than believe
(with a spin
leap
alive we’re alive)
we’re wonderful one times one
~e.e.cummings “if everything happens that can’t be done”

My heart is no longer blank because I carry your heart in mine. Over 44 years ago I handed my heart to you, trusting you to write whatever you wished.

And you handed me yours.

Over the decades, our story has poured forth. There is still more to come.

Even before we were born, it was clear: we’re wonderful one times one…

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The Grey Crossing

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“Your attention, please,” the mate’s voice says,
“we are slowing a moment for a memorial,”
and sure enough we all do, all of us, even those
entangled in a bustle to get to the other side,
restless chunks of festering business waiting,
little urgencies pricking us into a stressed huff.
Below on the car deck a small group slowly forms,
and a mate lowers a rope, beckons them forward,
the ferry engines slowing whatever our hurry,
and we are all coasting together on a rainy sea.

A heavy-set woman unwraps a nondescript urn
from a carefully held towel, handing it in turn
to an ungainly boy, a shy girl, an older man,
and she watches as each tips the urn to scatter
dust into a windy vortex off the ferry’s stern,
a fine grey mist streaming over the roiled wake
in a high breeze before settling, disappearing
into grey oblivion of sea, sky, and late afternoon.

As the ferry’s horn sounds three long blasts,
the four bow heads. The woman hesitates,
hides her face a moment in the towel, kisses
each of her party, and shakes the mate’s hand.
He speaks, his words lost to us in sea sounds
and engines, then looks up to the bridge, waves,
and the small group, holding hands, rejoins
some two hundred of us who have in silence
watched this mini-delay in our grey crossing.
The ferry’s engines begin their normal thrum
to push us forward again against a grey sea
and under a low, grey sky, where a fine dust
disappeared, and white seagulls rise and cry.
~Rob Jacques, “Memorial, Washington State Ferry” from Adagio for Su Tung-p’o

There is a sense of timelessness while riding on the ferry runs between the islands and peninsulas in Washington state. While driving my car on the busy freeways in the region, I am at the mercy of the weather, other drivers and all manner of delays. When I’m on a ferry, I become mere witness, only a rider seeking peaceful passage. Someone else worries about safely getting from Point A to Point B.

I’m able to breathe: watching the waves and the wake, the antics of gulls and cormorants, and rarely, an orca pod.

Next week is a time of memorial and remembrance of those who have passed into eternity. The ashes of my parents rest in the ground under a plaque that I visit annually with my family. Dad would have preferred his ashes to be cast out upon on the open water that he loved, but Mom chose a cemetery plot for them both, a more familiar resting place for a girl who grew up in the Palouse farmlands, no where near large bodies of water.

Last year, a good friend chose to be composted; he rests now in his beloved orchard, feeding the trees that continue to bear fruit.

No matter where our mortal bodies eventually find our rest, we hope to be remembered.

Our souls have risen, free.

video taken on the Samish Sea (Puget Sound) from my friend Andrew
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Where Nothing Need Be Said

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A hidden path that starts at a dead end,
Old ways, renewed by walking with a friend,
And crossing places taken hand in hand,

The passages where nothing need be said,
With bruised and scented sweetness underfoot
And unexpected birdsong overhead,

The sleeping life beneath a dark-mouthed burrow,
The rooted secrets rustling in a hedgerow,
The land’s long memory in ridge and furrow,

A track once beaten and now overgrown
With complex textures, every kind of green,
Land- and cloud-scape melting into one,

The rich meandering of streams at play,
A setting out to find oneself astray,
And coming home at dusk a different way.
~Malcolm Guite “Prayer/Walk”

Twice each day I walk the same downhill path to the barn for chores.  In the early mornings, I’m navigating half asleep. In the evenings, I’m weary from the long day. Sometimes I’m sliding on icy snow, sometimes slipping in mud from unending rain, sometimes wading through a sea of overgrown grass.

The constant in this twice daily journey is the worn-down path itself and where it takes me– no matter what time of year, the state of the weather, or how temporarily difficult to discern. My feet have learned the way by feel as much as by sight–the twist here, the dip there, the aromatic stretch through the stand of wild mint, all while trying to avoid stepping on the swerving barn cat perpetually underfoot.

Even my dogs follow the path rather than venture beyond.

I prefer to take the demarcated path to the barn as it keeps me focused on the task ahead of me. If I happen to go astray, I will surely find weeds to pull, a bird to admire, a cluster of cherries to eat, or a sweet pea blossom to smell. 

The distraction brings me momentary delight but my work remains to be done. So I always find my way back to the path and stick to it until it takes me home.

As a teenager, I was a trailblazer, bushwhacking my way through brambles to see what might be on the other side, or to discover a new favorite place in the woods, or simply to prove I was stronger than the brush that yielded to me. In my older years, I now tend to stick to the familiar. I like knowing where my feet will land, what work my hands will touch, and where my head will rest. The adventure of the unknown, so attractive in my youth, is less appealing now. 

The visible path, even when difficult to follow due to cover of snow or abundance of overgrowth, is a reminder I have a purpose and a destination. I know where I am going and I know where I’ve been. Nothing more needs to be said. I know I’m needed in both house and barn and the familiar path I take is a bridge between them.

We tread many paths during our time on this soil–some are routine and mundane, leading to the chores in our life, and others a matter of the heart and spirit. As tempting as it is to wander, the path is there for good reason. It doesn’t have to be a super highway, or lined with gold or even paved with good intentions. It may not be straight. But it must be true, steadfastly leading us to where we are called and back again to where we belong.

Time to pull on my boots.

An idealized barn path AI image created for this Barnstorming post
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