Category: dandelions

An Ordinary Day

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…it’s easy to forget that the ordinary is just the extraordinary that’s happened over and over again. Sometimes the beauty of your life is apparent. Sometimes you have to go looking for it. And just because you have to look for it doesn’t mean it’s not there.

God, grant me the grace of a normal day.
~Billy Coffey

 

Now all I see are dandelions on fire in the field.
To think I’ve walked through,
on top of,
over and around them for almost 60 years,
and only now I see what magic they contain
if I just settle down at their level and look.

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When Flowers Were Suns

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The world slipped bright over the glassy round of his eyeballs like images sparked in a crystal sphere. Flowers were suns and fiery spots of sky strewn throughout the woodland. Birds flickered like skipped stones across the cast inverted pond of heaven. His breath raked over his teeth, going in ice, coming out fire.
~Ray Bradbury from Dandelion Wine

Wait, and Know

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The earth invalid, dropsied, bruised, wheeled
Out in the sun,
After frightful operation.
She lies back, wounds undressed to the sun,
To be healed,
Sheltered from the sneapy chill creeping North wind,
Leans back, eyes closed, exhausted, smiling
Into the sun. Perhaps dozing a little.
While we sit, and smile, and wait, and know
She is not going to die.
~Ted Hughes from ” A March Morning Unlike Others”

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The Great Door Opens

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And as you sit on the hillside, or lie prone under the trees of the forest, or sprawl wet-legged on the shingly beach of a mountain stream, the great door, that does not look like a door, opens.
~Stephen Graham from The Gentle Art of Tramping

That great door opens on the present, illuminates it as with a multitude of flashing torches.
~Annie Dillard (in response to the above quote) from Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

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Those Spiky Suns

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How I loved those spiky suns,   
rooted stubborn as childhood   
in the grass, tough as the farmer’s   
big-headed children—the mats   
of yellow hair, the bowl-cut fringe.   
How sturdy they were and how   
slowly they turned themselves   
into galaxies, domes of ghost stars   
barely visible by day, pale   
cerebrums clinging to life   
on tough green stems.   Like you.   
Like you, in the end.   If you were here,   
I’d pluck this trembling globe to show   
how beautiful a thing can be   
a breath will tear away.  
~Jean Nordhaus “A Dandelion for My Mother”
The lawn is filled with them now
yellow spots in carpeted green
closed tight at night,
in the morning,
opening as miniature reflections
of the real dawn.
Growing up, paid ten cents per dandelion
I dug up each long offending root,
restoring the blemished green
to pristine perfection;
no more yellow splotches
unruly stems
blow away ghosts
releasing scores of
seedy offspring.
But it didn’t last.
The perfect lawn
like the perfect life~
unbesmirched~
isn’t possible.
The hardy seeds of trouble
float innocently on the breeze
or lie hidden deep in our soil
ready to spring up overnight
and overtake us.
Maybe that is our fear
of those little spunky spiky suns:
their cheerful glow
belies their pernicious
tendency to own us,
heart and soul.
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Caught and Stoppered

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photo by Josh Scholten
photo by Josh Scholten

“Dandelion wine.
The words were summer on the tongue.
The wine was summer caught and stoppered…
sealed away for opening on a January day
with snow falling fast and the sun unseen for weeks…”
~Ray Bradbury from Dandelion Wine

Now is mid-January:

Summer is found in our dark root cellar–
in rows of canned fruit and
a pile of potatoes

Summer is found in our freezer–
containers of berries and dehydrated pears
alongside bags of pea pods, corn and beans.

Summer is found in our barn–
piles of hay bales to be opened
to release the smell, the sun, the sweat of a midsummer evening’s harvest.

 

No Shame to Weep

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Don’t be ashamed to weep; ’tis right to grieve. Tears are only water, and flowers, trees, and fruit cannot grow without water. But there must be sunlight also. A wounded heart will heal in time, and when it does, the memory and love of our lost ones is sealed inside to comfort us.”
~ Brian Jacques 

The end-of-summer farm is silently sobbing in its loss; tears of fall, from fog, mist and drizzle, cling to everything everywhere. I arrive back in the house from barn chores soaked through from walking through the weeping.  ‘Tis no shame to be drenched in such sorrow.

The memory of summer is pressed deep in our grieving its passing, our wounds healed by Light that illumines our tears.
We are never left comfortless and weep in the knowing.

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The Unseen Seen

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It is in the early morning hour that the unseen is seen,
and that the far-off beauty and glory,
vanquishing all their vagueness,
move down upon us till they stand
clear as crystal close over against the soul.
~Sarah Smiley

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Slow buds the pink dawn like a rose
From out night’s gray and cloudy sheath;
Softly and still it grows and grows,
Petal by petal, leaf by leaf.
~Susan Coolidge

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For what human ill does not dawn seem to be an alleviation?
~Thornton Wilder

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Ensnared By Summer

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August rushes by like desert rainfall,
A flood of frenzied upheaval,
Expected,
But still catching me unprepared.
Like a match flame
Bursting on the scene,
Heat and haze of crimson sunsets.
Like a dream
Of moon and dark barely recalled,
A moment,
Shadows caught in a blink.
Like a quick kiss;
One wishes for more
But it suddenly turns to leave,
Dragging summer away.
–  Elizabeth Maua Taylor

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What wondrous life is this I lead!
Ripe apples drop about my head;
The luscious clusters of the vine
Upon my mouth do crush their wine;
The nectarine and curious peach
Into my hands themselves do reach;
Stumbling on melons, as I pass,
Ensnared with flowers, I fall on grass.
–  Andrew Marvell, Thoughts in a Garden

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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

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My life is like the summer rose
That opens to the morning sky,
But ere the shades of evening close
Is scattered on the ground – to die.
–  Richard Henry Wilde

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How to Pay Attention

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closerI don’t know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
With your one wild and precious life?
–  Mary Oliver, “The Summer Day”

Sometimes it is enough to kneel in the grass to capture the right light at the precise moment it is sent from above.  It is prayer to be blessed so, prayer to pay attention, prayer to be grateful for that moment.  I find myself on my knees often these days because it all will be gone too soon, much too soon.

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