My sorrow’s flower was so small a joy It took a winter seeing to see it as such. Numb, unsteady, stunned at all the evidence Of winter’s blind imperative to destroy, I looked up, and saw the bare abundance Of a tree whose every limb was lit and fraught with snow. What I was seeing then I did not quite know But knew that one mite more would have been too much. ~Christian Wiman “After a Storm” from Once in the West: Poems
Though a weak branch strains mightily to bear a summer’s bounty of fruit without breaking, it will sustain the load.
Then comes winter wind and ice storms and a snowflake becomes the mite too much.
Even so, a painful pruning is endured, when even the strongest limbs are trimmed back, urged to fearlessly grow on and be more fruitful.
I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener. He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit he prunes so that it will be even more fruitful. John 15: 1-2
This Lenten season I reflect on the words of the 19th century southern spiritual hymn “What Wondrous Love is This”
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This is the season: Cradle of quiet, Trees, waiting, Naked on the hill, Branches entwined Like lovers holding Hands.
Nothing is hidden. A lone leaf quivers On the apple tree. Snow has yet to fall. Waiting, the grass Lies mute.
It could be death but Isn’t. Yet. Wings Quicken serrated air As nuthatch, junco, Chickadee flit from Tree to tree, oblivious To the hawk circling Overhead, waiting, Like the grass, for what Comes next.
And it will come, To all of us—there’s No exception— But if that frightens You, hold it like A stone beneath The tongue until Fear softens, and You realize that Nothing is ever lost But is, instead, Transformed as one Door opens to another, As even now light Lifts the shadows, And, out of sight, Sap, wakeful, whispers In the apple tree. ~Sarah Rossiter “Winter”
The soul’s sap quivers. There is no earth smell Or smell of living thing.
We shall not cease from exploration And the end of all our exploring Will be to arrive where we started And know the place for the first time. Through the unknown, unremembered gate When the last of earth left to discover Is that which was the beginning;
And all shall be well and All manner of thing shall be well… ~T.S. Eliot – lines from “Little Gidding”in the Four Quartets
In the eternal “already, but not yet” my wintry soul struggles to find its footing. I can feel stuck in ice, immobile and numb. I wait impatiently for a wakening thaw, a whisper of the internal movement caught between frozen and melting. My soul’s sap smells the coming spring. I tremble, anticipating a bloom that will not fade. It may not happen quite yet, but I know it is coming.
This Lenten season will reflect on the words of the 19th century southern spiritual hymn “What Wondrous Love is This”
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O lovely apple! beautifully and completely rotten hardly a contour marred–
perhaps a little shrivelled at the top but that aside perfect in every detail! O lovely
apple! what a deep and suffusing brown mantles that unspoiled surface! No one
has moved you since I placed you on the porch rail a month ago to ripen.
No one. No one! ~William Carlos Williams “Perfection”
When a newspaper posed the question, “What’s Wrong with the World?” the Catholic thinker G. K. Chesterton reputedly wrote a brief letter in response:
“Dear Sirs: I am. Sincerely Yours, G. K. Chesterton.“
That is the attitude of someone who has grasped the message of Jesus. ~Timothy Keller, The Prodigal God
I am what’s wrong with the world and so are you.
Not one of us escapes the rottenness that lies not-so-deep beneath our shiny surface. We are full of wormholes, inviting the worms of the world to eat us alive.
One look at the news headlines of the day is enough mar the most perfect surface. No one moves to save us from our over-ripening fate; we sit untouched, withering and shriveling.
We are the problem and the problem is us.
We need rescue by a Savior who is the one good apple among a barrel of contagiously bad apples. We are so tainted, it takes Someone who truly is Perfect to transform us from the inside out, from worm-holes back to wholeness and on to holiness.
May we fall to our knees, grateful, that Christ, who is the Leader of all in His Kingdom, will grant us a grace and sanctuary and perfection we emphatically don’t deserve.
May He retrieve us before the worms (or the hornets) do. We are in this together.
We have met the enemy and he is us. ~Walt Kelly (in the words of Pogo)
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The juncture of twig and branch, scarred with lichen, is a gate we might enter, singing. ~Jane Kenyon from “Things” from Collected Poems
Who’s this –alone with stone and sea? It’s just the lowly Lichen We: the alga I, the fungus me; together, blooming quietly. What do we share–we two together? A brave indifference to the weather. A slow but steady growing pace. Resemblance to both mud and lace. As we now, so we shall be (if air clear and water free): the proud but lowly Lichen We, cemented for eternity. ~Joyce Sidman “The Lichen We” from Ubiquitous
All these years I overlooked them in the racket of the rest, this symbiotic splash of plant and fungus feeding on rock, on sun, a little moisture, air — tiny acid-factories dissolving salt from living rocks and eating them.
Here they are, blooming! Trail rock, talus and scree, all dusted with it: rust, ivory, brilliant yellow-green, and cliffs like murals!
Huge panels streaked and patched, quietly with shooting-stars and lupine at the base. Closer, with the glass, a city of cups!
Clumps of mushrooms and where do the plants begin? Why are they doing this? In this big sky and all around me peaks & the melting glaciers, why am I made to kneel and peer at Tiny? ~Lew Welch, “Springtime in the Rockies,Lichen” from Ring of Bone: Collected Poems
Back then, what did I know?
Uptown and downtown. Not north, not south, not you.
When I saw you, later, seaweed reefed in the air, you were grey-green, incomprehensible, old. What you clung to, hung from: old. Trees looking half-dead, stones.
Marriage of fungi and algae, chemists of air, changers of nitrogen-unusable into nitrogen-usable.
Like those nameless ones who kept painting, shaping, engraving, unseen, unread, unremembered. Not caring if they were no good, if they were past it.
Rock wools, water fans, earth scale, mouse ears, dust, ash-of-the-woods. Transformers unvalued, uncounted. Cell by cell, word by word, making a world they could live in. ~Jane Hirshfield from “For the Lichens” from Come, Thief
But what is life to a lichen? Yet its impulse to exist, to be, is every bit as strong as ours — arguably even stronger. If I were told that I had to spend decades being a furry growth on a rock in the woods, I believe I would lose the will to go on. Lichens don’t. Like virtually all living things, they will suffer any hardship, endure any insult, for a moment’s additional existence. Life, in short, just wants to be. ~Bill Bryson from A Short History of Nearly Everything
I’ve lived in the Pacific Northwest for nearly 70 years – this farm for 30 years. The grandeur of the snow-capped mountains to the north and east and the peaceful shore to the west overwhelms everything in between. Autumn after autumn, I’ve walked past these antique apple trees, but had never stopped to really look at the landscape growing on their bare shoulders and arms. There is a whole other ecosystem on each tree, a fairy land of earth bound dryland seaweed, luxuriant in the fall rains, colorful in the winter, hidden behind leaves and fruit in the hot summer. I had never really noticed the varied color and texture all around me.
This is the world of lichen, a mixed up symbiotic cross between algae and fungus, opportunistic enough to thrive on rock faces, but simply ecstatic on absorbent bark.
It hasn’t bothered them not to be noticed as they are busy minding their own business. As poet John McCullough writes in his poem “Lichen”:
It is merely a question of continuous adjustment, of improvising a life.
When I’m far from friends or the easing of a wind against my back, I think of lichen— never and always true to its essence, never and always at home.
Instead of lifting my eyes to the hills and the bay for a visual feast, I need only open the back gate to gaze on this landscape found on the ancient branches in my own back yard.
It’s a rich life of improvisation indeed.
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At times, particularly at night, I’m keenly aware of all the unknowable and uncountable lives happening behind closed doors and curtained windows, each one living their own sacred moment in time.
So many meals being eaten, baths taken, tears shed, stories told, prayers recited, kisses shared.
These moments are the blessings of a quotidian predictability that we try to pass on to our children. In our routines, we may become oblivious to the mysteries happening all around us: innumerable stars shining, fragile moths fluttering and sweetening apples hanging heavy — yet there is mystery within each of us as well.
In the dark of night, despite our weariness: We are remarkably loved and loving. We try our best in difficult times and circumstances. We grieve losses while struggling to survive sorrows. We seek purpose and meaning, despite feeling unworthy.
Each passing moment becomes one to cherish. Each moment mysteriously holy and sweet.
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There is a gold light in certain old paintings That represents a diffusion of sunlight. It is like happiness, when we are happy. It comes from everywhere and from nowhere at once, this light… One day the sickness shall pass from the earth for good. The orchard will bloom; Our work will be seen as strong and clean and good And all that we suffered through having existed Shall be forgotten as though it had never existed. ~Donald Justice – excerpt from Collected Poems
I live where golden hour light is doled out sparingly – we just might get too used to it – where gray clouds tend to mute and muffle the spirit.
So I search for light as if it is buried like treasure.
When gilded light illuminates and glows, when all is immersed and lifted by its radiance, I forget the gray, as if it never was.
So I wait patiently, ready for another such burst of joy coming from everywhere and nowhere all at once. A moment in time to be preserved, not to be forgotten.
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In October of the year, he counts potatoes dug from the brown field, counting the seed, counting the cellar’s portion out, and bags the rest on the cart’s floor.
He packs wool sheared in April, honey in combs, linen, leather tanned from deerhide, and vinegar in a barrel hooped by hand at the forge’s fire.
He walks by his ox’s head, ten days to Portsmouth Market, and sells potatoes, and the bag that carried potatoes, flaxseed, birch brooms, maple sugar, goose feathers, yarn.
When the cart is empty he sells the cart. When the cart is sold he sells the ox, harness and yoke, and walks home, his pockets heavy with the year’s coin for salt and taxes,
and at home by fire’s light in November cold stitches new harness for next year’s ox in the barn, and he carved a new yoke and sawed planks for a new cart and split shingles all winter, while his wife made flax into linen all winter, and his daughter embroidered linen all winter, and his son carved Indian brooms from birch all winter, and everybody made candles, and in March they tapped the sugar maple trees and boiled the sap down, and in April they sheared the sheep, spun yarn, and wove and knitted, and in May they planted potatoes, turnips, and cabbages, while apple blossoms bloomed and fell, while bees woke up, starting to make new honey, and geese squawked in the barnyard, dropping feathers as soft as clouds. ~Donald Hall “The Oxcart Man”
Come inside now. Stand beside the warming stove. Watch out through the windows as a cold rain tears down the last leaves.
The larder full of dried herbs, hot peppers, chutneys, jellies, jams, dill pickles, pickled relishes, pickled beets.
The freezer full of frozen greens— chard and spinach, collards, kale— green beans, basil, red sauces, applesauce, and smoked meats.
The woodshed dry and full of wood, winter squashes stashed away. Down cellar: potatoes, carrots, crock of sauerkraut.
Come inside now. Stand beside the warming stove. Listen. Wait. ~David Budbill “Come Inside Now” from Happy Life
Nothing would sleep in that cellar, dank as a ditch, Bulbs broke out of boxes hunting for chinks in the dark, Shoots dangled and drooped, Lolling obscenely from mildewed crates, Hung down long yellow evil necks, like tropical snakes. And what a congress of stinks! Roots ripe as old bait, Pulpy stems, rank, silo-rich, Leaf-mold, manure, lime, piled against slippery planks. Nothing would give up life: Even the dirt kept breathing a small breath. ~Theodore Roetke “Root Cellar”from The Collected Poems
Even in the cold wet chill of November, our garden continues breathing, guarded by the furry fellow on a stalk below until a heavy windstorm topples him over.
When I descend the steps into our root cellar, I find a still life of empty jars, no longer in use for produce to be preserved until spring. I no longer preserve produce through canning, as I used to. Instead we dry and freeze fruits and vegetables for storage. The cellar, though not as full as in years past, remains a place of quiet fecundity with its rich and earthy smells – a reminder of how things were done before the conveniences of today. We still keep apples, potatoes and onions in safe-keeping below ground – some of this farm’s orchard and garden harvest has been stored fresh in the cellar, year after year, for decades.
Until the last century, all of a farm family’s energy and effort was to preserve and store what was necessary to survive another year. Today, in too many places in the world, simple survival remains a family’s necessary and noble goal.
Surrounded by the relative comfort and privilege of a bountiful garden, orchard and woodpile, I never want to forget that.
Come inside. Warm up by the fire. Listen. Wait. Pray for lasting peace.
My artichoke “pup”
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Lord, the time has come. The summer has been so long. Lay your shadows over the sundials and let loose the wind over the fields.
Order the last fruits to fully ripen; give them two more days of southern sun, urge them to perfection and speed the last sweetness into the laden vine.
Those who have no house, will not build one now. Those who are alone will long remain so, they will rise, and read, and write long letters and through the avenues go here and there restlessly wandering, with the leaves drifting down. ~Rainer Maria Rilke “Herbsttag” English translation by Paul Archer from 1902 in the collection Das Buch der Bilder.
First hints of our condition manifest: Spite in the wind, mist-gauze across the moon, Light chill, the spider’s filaments, blanched grass, And two days as warm as the south change nothing at all. A morning comes when you know this cannot end well. Soon it will be no time for gathering in gardens All too soon, my dears, it will be the weather For Brahms quintets, for leaves drifting triste past the windows Of those in their rooms alone for the duration, For whom this is no time to build. Those now alone Are going to remain so through this estranging season Of reading, of writing emails as detailed as letters, Of watching dry leaves grow sodden on empty pavements. Rilke said this in lines that I last read in Edinburgh With my most beautiful aunt in her later age When, many things gone, she remembered those verse in German. ~Peter Davidson “September Castles”
Enter autumn as you would a closing door. Quickly, cautiously. Look for something inside that promises color, but be wary of its cast — a desolate reflection, an indelible tint. ~Pamela Steed Hill “September Pitch”
Summer has packed up, and moved on without bidding adieu or looking back over its shoulder. Cooling winds have carried in darkening clouds. I gaze upward to see and smell the change. Rain has fallen, long overdue, yet there is temptation to bargain for a little more time. Though we needed this good drenching, there are still potatoes to pull from the ground, apples and pears to pick, tomatoes not yet ripened, corn cobs too skinny to pick.
I’m just not ready to wave goodbye to sun-soaked clear skies.
The overhead overcast is heavily burdened with clues of what is coming: earlier dusk, the feel of moisture, the deepening graying hues, the briskness of breezes, the inevitable mud and mold. There is no negotiation possible. I need to steel myself and get ready, wrapping myself in the soft shawl of inevitability.
So autumn advances with the clouds, taking up residence where summer left off. Though there is still clean up of the overabundance left behind, autumn will bring its own unique plans for an exhilarating display of a delicious palette of hues.
Lord, the time has come. The truth is we’ve seen nothing yet.
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In Summer, in a burst of summertime Following falls and falls of rain, When the air was sweet-and-sour of the flown fineflower of Those goldnails and their gaylinks that hang along a lime… ~Gerard Manley Hopkins from “Cheery Beggar”
What I wanted wasn’t to let in the wetness. That can be mopped.
Nor the cold. There are blankets.
What I wanted was the siren, the thunder, the neighbor, the fireworks, the dog’s bark.
Which of them didn’t matter?
Yes, this world is perfect, all things as they are.
But I wanted not to be the one sleeping soundly, on a soft pillow, clean sheets untroubled, dreaming there still might be time,
Sweet and sour extends far beyond a Chinese menu; it is the air we breathe. Dichotomy is in our life and times – the bittersweet of simple pleasures laced with twinges and tears.
I am but a cheery beggar in this world, desiring to hang tight to the overwhelming sweetness of each glorious moment:
the startling late summer sunrise, the renewed green coming through the dead of spent fields, the warm hug of a compassionate word, a house filled with love and laughter.
But as beggars aren’t choosers, I can’t only have sweet alone; I must endure the sour that comes as part of the package —
the deepening dark of a sleepless and restless night, the muddy muck that comes after endless rain, the sting of a biting critique, the emptiness when younger ones head home.
So I slog through sour to revel some day in sweet.
Months of manure-permeated air is overcome one miraculous morning by the unexpected and undeserved fragrance of apple blossoms, so sweet, so pure, so full of promise of the wholesome fruit to come.
The manure makes the sweet sweeter months later, long after the stench is gone.
And I breathe in deeply now, content and grateful for this moment of grace and bliss, wanting to hold it in the depths of my lungs forever, its mercy overwhelming the power of sour.
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