We were riding through frozen fields in a wagon at dawn. A red wing rose in the darkness.
And suddenly a hare ran across the road. One of us pointed to it with his hand.
That was long ago. Today neither of them is alive, Not the hare, nor the man who made the gesture.
O my love, where are they, where are they going The flash of a hand, streak of movement, rustle of pebbles. I ask not out of sorrow, but in wonder. ~ Czeslaw Milosz “Encounter”
She philosophically noted dates as they came past in the revolution of the year;… her own birthday and every other day, individualized by incidents in which she had taken some share. She suddenly thought one afternoon that there was yet another date of greater importance, her own death… A day which lay sly and unseen among all other days of the year… but not the less surely there. When was it? ~Thomas Hardy from Tess of the d’Urbervilles
We do not know the day or the hour of our death day. We must not be lulled into complacency by the routines of daily life; it could be tomorrow or the next day or maybe it was yesterday.
Each moment is a gift, like the flash of a blossom or the transparency of a rabbit’s ear, pulsing with each heart beat as our blood flows and sustains.
And we know – blood was shed, just as blossoms shed, covering us all.
Keeping watch, keeping watch – there is a day when we go home.
fallen sakura petals in Tokyo (photo by Nate Gibson)
Therefore keep watch, because you do not know the day or the hour. Matthew 25: 1-13
This Lenten season I reflect on the words of the 19th century southern spiritual hymn “What Wondrous Love is This”
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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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Late in May as the light lengthens toward summer the young goldfinches flutter down through the day for the first time to find themselves among fallen petals cradling their day’s colors in the day’s shadows of the garden beside the old house after a cold spring with no rain not a sound comes from the empty village as I stand eating the black cherries from the loaded branches above me saying to myself Remember this ~W.S. Merwin “Black Cherries”
Let me imagine that we will come again when we want to and it will be spring we will be no older than we ever were the worn griefs will have eased like the early cloud through which the morning slowly comes to itself and the ancient defenses against the dead will be done with and left to the dead at last the light will be as it is now in the garden that we have made here these years together of our long evenings and astonishment ~W.S. Merwin “To Paula in Late Spring”
Yes, let us be astonished that any spring happens. That the dull gray of winter yields to petals and fruitful blossoms, then to fruit that is both sweet and sour on our tongues. That the air resonates with birdsong and flower perfume and the sun warms enough to dissipate the mist and tears.
Let us remember this, oh let us remember so it is never forgotten: all is made right and good as eternity itself will taste like this.
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One day, something very old happened again. The green came back to the branches, settling like leafy birds on the highest twigs; the ground broke open as dark as coffee beans.
The clouds took up their positions in the deep stadium of the sky, gloving the bright orb of the sun before they pitched it over the horizon.
It was as good as ever: the air was filled with the scent of lilacs and cherry blossoms sounded their long whistle down the track
The great mystery of God’s love is that we are not asked to live as if we are not hurting, as if we are not broken. In fact, we are invited to recognize our brokenness as a brokenness in which we can come in touch with the unique way that God loves us. The great call of Jesus is to put your brokenness under the blessing. ~Henri Nouwen from a Lecture at Scarritt-Bennett Center
Some say you’re lucky If nothing shatters it.
But then you wouldn’t Understand poems or songs. You’d never know Beauty comes from loss.
It’s deep inside every person: A tear tinier Than a pearl or thorn.
All the love you will ever feel you have always carried within you
The pellet you think love is
blooms into stone, into flame, into glass
The tree knows how to feed every part of itself
When you tap the tree to drink it it speaks to you
There is sweetness in you All the self can do is melt ~Hannah Stephenson from “Sap Season”
The last remaining cherry tree on this farm, a Royal Anne, has stood between house and barn for over ninety years, bearing heavily some years, and other years, like this one, yielding only a handful of fruit. Last year was a bumper crop followed by a hot dry summer and a bitter cold winter. The old tree was overly stressed, its branch joints and bark defects oozing miniature sculptures of resin in response.
These secretions feel hard and seem glass-like, yet reflecting this tree’s slow internal circulation, they change subtly day by day. This amber becomes this tree’s aging and suffering made manifest. Though its cherries burst with juicy flavor, it bleeds crystalline flame from its wounds.
What a gift is this leaking love, moving deep inside an old trunk. In its thirsty anguish, our dear cherry tree is weeping to reflect the sun.
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Out of the nursery and into the garden where it rooted and survived its first hard winter, then a few years of freedom while it blossomed, put out its first tentative branches, withstood the insects and the poisons for insects, developed strange ideas about its height and suffered the pruning of its quirks and clutters, its self-indulgent thrusts and the infighting of stems at cross purposes year after year. Each April it forgot why it couldn’t do what it had to do, and always after blossoms, fruit, and leaf-fall, was shown once more what simply couldn’t happen.
Its oldest branches now, the survivors carved by knife blades, rain, and wind, are sending shoots straight up, blood red, into the light again. ~David Wagoner “The Cherry Tree”
A stone’s throw from an abandoned homestead foundation leans an ancient cherry tree, bent by countless storms and prunings, its northern half now bare, yet from the southern half dangles clusters of sweet century old promises.
Once orchard lifeblood of this farm, its fruit picked for farmers’ market an early dawn hour’s wagon ride to town; now broken down, forgotten until this week of fruitful surrender.
Already, but not yet finished, roots still reaching deep for one more season; a faithful cycle blooming forth with budding life from gnarled knots to soon yield glorious from weary dying branches.
Hundreds of glistening amber globes of rosy sheen cling clustered on crooked lichened limbs, to be gathered heaping into bowls of gold, awaiting ecstatic burst of savored perfection, fulfilling an old promise of sweet abandon.
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Not a color I’ve wanted to wear—too innocently girlish, and I’m not innocent, not a girl. But today the gnarled cherry trees along Alabama Street are decked out like bridesmaids—garlands in their hair, nosegays in their hands—extravagant,
finally the big spring wedding to splurge, and hang the cost. Each really wants to be the bride so she can toss her bouquet until, unaccustomed, the gutters choke with pink confetti that flies up and whirls in the wake of cars going west… ~Luci Shaw from “Pink” in What the Light Was Like
If you stand in an orchard In the middle of Spring and you don’t make a sound you can hear pink sing, a darling, whispery song of a thing. ~Mary O’Neill from Hailstones and Halibut Bones “Pink”
I have always avoided wearing anything pink other than the blush of my windblown cheeks on a brisk April morning. Yet how can I help but listen to pink as its blooms burst open all around me, bubbling with pastel ebullience, whispering me awake in the morning and gently bidding me goodnight.
However just and anxious I have been I will stop and step back from the crowd of those who may agree with what I say, and be apart. There is no earthly promise of life or peace but where the roots branch and weave their patient silent passages in the dark; uprooted, I have been furious without an aim. I am not bound for any public place, but for ground of my own where I have planted vines and orchard trees, and in the heat of the day climbed up into the healing shadow of the woods. Better than any argument is to rise at dawn and pick dew-wet berries in a cup. ~Wendell Berry “A Standing Ground”from The Selected Poems of Wendell Berry
This is an age of argument: silence is labeled violence so we’re induced to have our say and look for others to listen and support our point of view. Without mutual agreement, there is plenty of fodder for argument with a duel-to-the-death determination to win others over to our way of thinking.
Agreeing to disagree doesn’t seem to be an option any longer. Why can’t our debates simply settle down to get on with life and find a way to live alongside each other? Instead, if I don’t see it your way, I’m morally deficient or hostile or worst of all I’m not an ally, so by modern definition, I’ve become the enemy.
But I’m not the enemy and never want to be.
It’s enough to make one retreat from the fray altogether. Those of us who have been around awhile know: anger puts a match to feelings that burn hot inside and outside. Initially debate is energizing with a profound sense of purpose and direction, yet too soon it becomes nothing but ashes.
I refuse to be furious for the sake of fury and indignation. Arguments, tempting as they may be in the heat of the moment, don’t hold a candle to the lure of sharing sweet fruit of the garden and the cool shadows of the forest with those who need it most.
So come in and help me eat berries and cherries but leave your arguments at the door. You can pick them up later on your way out if you wish, but most likely they will have forgotten all about you and wandered away while you were busy living life.
Fickle things, arguments – they tend to fizzle out until someone decides to light a match to them again.
Just before the green begins there is the hint of green a blush of color, and the red buds thicken the ends of the maple’s branches and everything is poised before the start of a new world, which is really the same world just moving forward from bud to flower to blossom to fruit to harvest to sweet sleep, and the roots await the next signal, every signal every call a miracle and the switchboard is lighting up and the operators are standing by in the pledge drive we’ve all been listening to: Go make the call. ~Stuart Kestenbaum “April Prayer”
The buds have been poised for weeks and then, as if all responding to an identical summons to action, let go of all their pent up potential~ exploding with harmonious energy enough to make us want to donate all we have, over and over again.
How much may I pledge to witness this miracle? Nothing, nothing at all. It’s free. It’s totally free.
