Category: creation

Feeling the Twinges of this World

barnstormingblog2 Comments

Under a canopy of leaves,
the irises, bountiful,
the calico butterfly flashing

and this one golden head
of a dazzling sunflower grasping
its cowled neck,

outweighing its stalk

in order to turn,
full bonneted,
to the absolute light.

What wonders these are:
things struggling
filament by filament,

birds twittering in a laughter
that could be weeping,
barely feeling the twinges of this world,

where the weak get stronger
or snailish with cracks

a day at a time.
~Judith Harris “Recovery”

Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue.

Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything.

Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.

Be patient and without bitterness, and realize that the least we can do is to make coming into existence no more difficult for Him than the earth does for spring when it wants to come.
~Rainier Marie Rilke from Letters to a Young Poet

We feel the twinges of struggling to live broken in difficult times; indeed, all our days are difficult times.

We won’t get out of this predicament alive, yet we are loved.

Whether we care or not about what happens
after our last breath does not alter the fact
Christ dwells alongside us;
our heavy heads bow as we turn to face
the compelling Light.

Like Mary, we must say:  “Let it be,” – not “no, not me, not now.”

We are transformed by accepting He has come on our behalf:
an oh-so-difficult faith connecting us like a slender filament to heaven:
like the bird greeting the morning with songs that weep,
like the butterfly emerging from its cracked chrysalis to try its wings,
like the cracked snail shell abandoned
because we no longer fit inside its broken confinement.

A Warm and Steady Sweetness

barnstormingblogLeave a comment

It’s ripe, the melon
by our sink. Yellow,
bee-bitten, soft, it perfumes
the house too sweetly.
At five I wake, the air
mournful in its quiet.
My wife’s eyes swim calmly
under their lids, her mouth and jaw
relaxed, different.
What is happening in the silence
of this house? Curtains
hang heavily from their rods.
Ficus leaves tremble
at my footsteps. Yet
the colors outside are perfect–
orange geranium, blue lobelia.
I wander from room to room
like a man in a museum:
wife, children, books, flowers,
melon. Such still air. Soon
the mid-morning breeze will float in
like tepid water, then hot.
How do I start this day,
I who am unsure
of how my life has happened
or how to proceed
amid this warm and steady sweetness?
~Albert Garcia “August Morning” from Skunk Talk


I know I am getting old and I say so,
but I don’t think of myself as an old man.
I think of myself as a young man
with unforeseen debilities. Time is neither
young nor old, but simply new, always
counting, the only apocalypse. And the clouds
—no mere measure or geometry, no cubism,
can account for clouds or, satisfactorily, for bodies.
There is no science for this, or art either.
Even the old body is new—who has known it
before?—and no sooner new than gone, to be
replaced by a body yet older and again new.
The clouds are rarely absent from our sky
over this humid valley, and there is a sycamore
that I watch as, growing on the riverbank,
it forecloses the horizon, like the years
of an old man. And you, who are as old
almost as I am, I love as I loved you
young, except that, old, I am astonished
at such a possibility, and am duly grateful.
~ Wendell Berry “VII.” from Leavings. 

…today, the unseen was everything.
The unknown, the only real fact of life.
All this he saw,
for one moment breathless and intense,
vivid on the morning sky;
and still, as he looked, he lived;
and still, as he lived, he wondered.
~Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows

How do I start this day
when I am unsure of the immense unknown?

I begin by looking.
I live with wonder and astonishment;
yet another morning has been gifted to me.

Even if sleep proved elusive,
the air through the windows still warm at midnight.
When even a melon-colored sky looks dry
along with everything beneath it.

When wildfire smoke still drifts in on waves from the north and east, both obscuring and rounding the sharp edges of mountain peaks.

I wonder, grateful, for the sweetness
on this tepid summer morning
offering itself to me.

I’m here.
I look, I live, I wonder.
Let the day begin, opening up into the immense unknown.

The Eyes Have It

barnstormingblogLeave a comment

To look into the eye of a horse
is to see a reflection of yourself
that you might’ve forgotten.
No grief was big enough
not to be washed clean in your horse’s eye.
~Gillian Mears from Foal’s Bread

(i do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens; only something in me understands

the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
~e.e.cummings from “somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond”

…whenever you mark a horse, or a dog,
with a peculiarly mild, calm, deep-seated eye,
be sure he is an Aristotle or a Kant,
tranquilly speculating upon the mysteries in man. 
No philosophers so thoroughly comprehend us as dogs and horses.
They see through us at a glance.
But there is a touch of divinity ….
and a special halo about a horse…
~Herman Melville from Redburn: His First Voyage

Two whistles, one for each,
and familiar sounds draw close in darkness—
cadence of hoof on hardened bottomland,
twinned blowing of air through nostrils curious, flared.
They come deepened and muscular movements
conjured out of sleep: each small noise and scent
heavy with earth, simple beyond communion…

…and in the night, their mares’ eyes shine, reflecting stars,
the entire, outer light of the world here. 
~Jane Hirschfield from “After Work”

There is a moment after you move your eye away
when you forget where you are
because you’ve been living, it seems,
somewhere else, in the silence of the night sky.

You’ve stopped being here in the world.
You’re in a different place,
a place where human life has no meaning.

You’re not a creature in a body.
You exist as the stars exist,
participating in their stillness, their immensity.
~Louise Glück from “Telescope” in Averno

It’s tempting to fall headfirst into each eye’s fathomless well –
These eyes rivet me as they search my own:
a retinal magnet drawing me into
such incalculable depths.

Yet I am merely reflected like starlight;
only dancing on this shining mirrored surface
when I long to dive deep
to understand what they see in me:
so lost I long to be found.

Ways to Waste Wisely My Days

barnstormingblog4 Comments

This world, after all our science and sciences,
is still a miracle;
wonderful, inscrutable, magical, and more,
to whosoever will think of it.

To awaken each morning
with a smile brightening my face;
to greet the day with reverence
for the opportunities it contains;
to approach my work with a clean mind;
to hold ever before me,
even in the doing of little things,
the ultimate purpose toward which I am working;
to meet men and women
with laughter on my lips
and love in my heart;
to be gentle, kind, and courteous
through all the hours;
to approach the night
with weariness that ever woos sleep 
and the joy that comes from work well done – 
this is how I desire to waste wisely my days.
~Thomas Dekker, 16th century British playwright

I work hard at wasting my days wisely. 

Summers are a classic opportunity to waste time and I do
– happily –
yet there is always a hint of regret:
I could have made more of a dewy bright morning,
an afternoon of cooling shadows,
or a full-moon twilight.

Or perhaps I could have made this day better
for someone else to waste.

How better to waste my days:
to find ways for my interactions to be more joyous,
if only through a smile,
a shared chuckle,
a kind word,
a generous gesture.

Waste away, dear days. What a wonderful world this could be.

The world, after all, is a miracle and needs us to notice.

Preoccupied by Tiny Flowers

barnstormingblogLeave a comment

Still, what I want in my life
Is to be willing
To be dazzled-
To cast aside the weight of facts

And maybe even
To float a little
Above this difficult world.
I want to believe I am looking 

Into the white fire of a great mystery.
I want to believe that the imperfections are nothing —
that the light is everything —
that it is more than the sum
of each flawed blossom rising and fading. And I do.
~Mary Oliver from “The Ponds” from House of Light

Tell all the truth but tell it slant —
Success in Circuit lies
Too bright for our infirm Delight
The Truth’s superb surprise
As Lightning to the Children eased
With explanation kind
The Truth must dazzle gradually
Or every man be blind —
~Emily Dickinson 1263

Who would have thought it possible that a tiny little flower could preoccupy a person so completely that there simply wasn’t room for any other thought?
~ Sophie Scholl from At the Heart of the White Rose

There are days we live
as if death were nowhere
in the background; from joy
to joy to joy, from wing to wing,
from blossom to blossom to
impossible blossom, to sweet impossible blossom.
~Li-Young Lee from “From Blossoms”

I can’t always handle all the truth all at once,
especially when it hurts. 

It is best if truth
coaxes me slowly out of the shadows
where I like to hunker down, preoccupied,
like a tight little bud refusing to open.

Truth told slant is an illuminating back drop,
encouraging me to peek out from the darkness,
open up, dazzled by the light.

And then, perhaps,
~just maybe~
I too may become almost
dazzling to behold.

Unencumbered by My Old Nonsense

barnstormingblogLeave a comment

How did I come to be
this particular version of me,
and not some other, this morning
of purple delphiniums
blooming like royalty,
destined to meet these three dogs
asleep at my feet, and not others—
this soft summer morning,
sitting on her screened porch
become ours, our wind chime
singing of wind and time,
yellow-white digitalis
feeding bees and filling me—
and more abundance to come:
basil, tomatoes, zucchini.
What luck or fate, instinct,
or grace brought me here—
in shade, beneath hidden stars,
a soft, summer morning,
seeing with my whole being,
love made visible.
~Laura Foley “The Once Invisible Garden” from Sledding in the Valley of the Shadow 

Suddenly it is August again, so hot,
breathless heat.
I sit on the ground
in the garden of Carmel,
picking ripe cherry tomatoes
and eating them.
They are so ripe that the skin is split,
so warm and sweet
from the attentions of the sun,
the juice bursts in my mouth,
an ecstatic taste,
and I feel that I am in the mouth of summer,
sloshing in the saliva of August.
Hummingbirds halo me there,
in the great green silence,
and my own bursting heart
splits me with life.
~Anne Higgins “Cherry Tomatoes” from At the Year’s Elbow

photo by Josh Scholten

At five I wake, the air
mournful in its quiet.

Such still air. Soon
the mid-morning breeze will float in
like tepid water, then hot.

How do I start this day,
I who am unsure
of how my life has happened
or how to proceed
amid this warm and steady sweetness?
~Albert Garcia from “August Morning”  from Skunk Talk 

Write it in your heart that every day is the best day of the year.
Live in the sunshine, swim in the sea, breathe the wild air.
Finish each day and be done with it.
You have done what you could.
Some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in;
forget them as soon as you can.
Tomorrow is a new day.
You shall begin it serenely and with too high a spirit
to be encumbered with your old nonsense.
~Ralph Waldo Emerson from Collected Poems and Translations

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

How do I start this gift of a new August summer day?

When sleep is elusive, the air too still and warm at midnight
When even a cloud-strewn sky looks dry
When wildfire smoke drifts in on waves from north and east, obscuring, rounding out the sharp edges

Yet I taste the sweetness offered this tepid summer morning,
unencumbered by my old over-thinking nonsense.

I’m here, present and accounted for, blessed by all I see.
I am doing what I can.
Let the day begin.

Even
After
All this time
The sun never says to the earth,

“You owe
Me.”

Look
What happens
With a love like that,
It lights the
Whole
Sky.
~Daniel Ladinsky, from “The Gift”

The Very Top of Summer

barnstormingblogLeave a comment

The first week of August hangs at the very top of summer,
the top of the live-long year,
like the highest seat of a Ferris wheel
when it pauses in its turning.

The weeks that come before
are only a climb from balmy spring,
and those that follow a drop to the chill of autumn,
but the first week of August is motionless, and hot.

It is curiously silent, too,
with blank white dawns and glaring noons,
and sunsets smeared with too much color.
~Natalie Babbitt from Tuck Everlasting

After an early summer of moderate temperatures and occasional rains, we’re adjusting to temperatures in the nineties. No one asked me if enduring heat, humidity, and smoky skies was a reasonable way to conclude the first week of August.

So I sit silently rocking and sweating in the highest vantage point of this summer’s ferris wheel ride so far, hanging breathlessly mid-air, a brief pause in the endless cycle of sunny days.

Having just arrived at the top, I venture to look down, knowing I am simply along for the ride, and Someone else is at the controls. I might as well enjoy the view of all that is behind, alongside and in front of me, but especially what is below, holding me up in thin air.

All too quickly will come the rapid descent into autumn, my stomach leaping into my chest with the lurch forward into the unknown. As the climb to get here took so long, I am not quite ready for this inevitable drop back into the chill.

Hot or not, it’s best to celebrate August for all it’s splashiness and shining illumination necessitating sunglasses. At least I’m swinging in what little breeze there is, endeavoring to capture this moment, and every moment, forever.

Lyrics from poem by James Agee:
Sure on this shining night
Of starmade shadows round
Kindness must watch for me
This side the ground
On this shining night
This shining night

Sure on this shining night
Of starmade shadows round
Kindness must watch for me
This side the ground
On this shining night
This shining night

The late year lies down the north
All is healed, all is health
High summer holds the earth
Hearts all whole

The late year lies down the north
All is healed, all is health
High summer holds the earth
Hearts all whole

Sure on this shining night
Sure on this shining night

Sure on this shining night
I weep for wonder
Wandering far alone
Of shadows on the stars

Sure on this shining night
Of starmade shadows round
Kindness must watch for me
This side the ground

Oh, this shining night
This shining night
The shining night
Sure on this shining night

In Choral Procession

barnstormingblog1 Comment

In noisy shades
of apricot and pink
the blossoms

of the gladiola open
all down the long aisle
of the stem

like a choral procession
or the woody
notes

of a flute
opening one stop
at a time.
~Linda Pastan “Gladiola”

Most flowers tempt our senses:
vibrant colors to the eye,
softness of the petals to the touch,
delicate fragrances wafting to the nose –
even some have a piquant perfumed taste for the palate.

Yet how many blooms sound like an orchestra
tuning in the wind?

A long gladiola stalk rises boldly,
swaying in the breeze, each key
blossom unfolding one by one in flowing overture,
a kaleidoscope symphone planted in a row.

When each is done with its own ruffled note,
the next one opens to play its part,
in harmony with its neighbor.

The notes progress up the stem
until the final chord is held
~fermata-like~
until performances commence
again next summer.

I’ll be sure to reserve a front row seat.

And Light Splashed…

barnstormingblog1 Comment

Light splashed this morning
on the shell-pink anemones
swaying on their tall stems;
down blue-spiked veronica
light flowed in rivulets
over the humps of the honeybees;
this morning I saw light kiss
the silk of the roses
in their second flowering,
my late bloomers
flushed with their brandy.
A curious gladness shook me.
So I have shut the doors of my house,
so I have trudged downstairs to my cell,
so I am sitting in semi-dark
hunched over my desk
with nothing for a view
to tempt me
but a bloated compost heap,
steamy old stinkpile,
under my window;
and I pick my notebook up
and I start to read aloud
and still-wet words I scribbled
on the blotted page:
“Light splashed…”

I can scarcely wait till tomorrow
when a new life begins for me,
as it does each day,
as it does each day.
~Stanley Kunitz  “The Round” from Passing Through: The Later Poems, New and Selected

It is too easy to be ground to a pulp by the various irritations of the day – aggravations are too easily expressed, worries never seem to wane – all of it sucks gladness out of me. 

When my feelings become four-dimensional and surround and drown me, I lose all perspective on what got me out of bed to begin the day.

God is in these intricate details, whether the splash of light on a petal or the smell of rotting compost; it is my job to notice this. It is tempting to look past His ubiquitous presence in all things, to seek out only the elegant grandeur of creation and bypass the plain and smelly and homely.

Yet even what lacks beauty from my limited perspective is worthy of His divine attention. He knows the value and purpose of each thing He created, including me and the things that aggravate me no end – like mosquitos.

The time has come to be refreshed and renewed
even when surrounded by decay.
His care is revealed in the tiniest way.
He is worthy of my attention because I am constantly worthy of His.

If I rise early enough, I can see each new day’s light splash everything awake. By the time I come in to sit down to record my words and photos, I’m thoroughly washed by a fresh dawn. I can scarcely wait to take on what this day will bring.

I can scarcely wait till tomorrow
when a new life begins for me,
as it does each day,
as it does each day.

Consumed by Harrowing Fire

barnstormingblogLeave a comment

(War Time)

There will come soft rains and the smell of the ground,
And swallows circling with their shimmering sound;

And frogs in the pools singing at night,
And wild plum trees in tremulous white,

Robins will wear their feathery fire
Whistling their whims on a low fence-wire;

And not one will know of the war, not one
Will care at last when it is done.

Not one would mind, neither bird nor tree
If mankind perished utterly;

And Spring herself, when she woke at dawn,
Would scarcely know that we were gone.
~Sara Teasdale “There Will Come Soft Rains”

…one of man’s purposes is to assist God
in the work of “hallowing” the things of Creation.
By a tremendous heave of the spirit,
the devout man frees the divine sparks
trapped in the mute things of time;
he uplifts the forms and moments of creation,
bearing them aloft
into the rare air and hallowing fire
in which all clays must shatter and burst.
~Annie Dillard from Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

The fire burst the house and let it slam flat down, puffing out skirts of spark and smoke.

The crash. The attic smashing into kitchen and parlour. The parlour into cellar, cellar into sub-cellar.

Smoke and silence. A great quantity of smoke.

Dawn showed faintly in the east. Among the ruins, one wall stood alone. Within the wall, a last voice said, over and over again and again, even as the sun rose to shine upon the heaped rubble
and steam:

“Today is August 5, 2026, today is August 5, 2026, today is…”

~Ray Bradbury from the end of his 1950 short story “There Will Come Soft Rains”

So much of the world is beset by smoke and ashes this summer.

Not only are the fires roaring uncontrolled across landscapes, consuming everything in their path,
but harrowing fires burn within us as well.

We too are consumed,
left in a haze of gray and dust.

Even the smoke-painted sun traverses the sky
and then settles and sets,
swallowed by a seed puff ball,
absorbed and hallowed.

Like us, may it be released aloft this morning
transformed like a seed freed to the wind,
to rise unfettered and holy.