Category: grass

An Everlasting Quietness

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The simple words no longer work.
Neither do the grand ones.
Something about
The hanging bits of dark
Mixed with your hair.
The everlasting quietness
Attached to the deserted barn
Made me think I’d discovered you
But you already knew all about yourself
As we stood on the edge of a forest
With your dress as languid as the air,
The day made of spring wind and daffodils.
Then the sky appeared in blue patches
Among slow clouds,
Oak leaves came out on the trees,
Grass suddenly became green,
Filled with small animals that sing.
All the parts of spring were gathering,
The earth was being created all over again
One piece at a time
Just for you.
~Tom Hennen “Found on the Earth” From Darkness Sticks To Everything

I’m waking from wintry doldrums,
to earlier mornings, longer evenings,
healing from weeks of cold and weariness.

It is as if all has been rebirthed,
vivid with light and songs and color and smells –
I cannot imagine not sharing it all.

This renewal feels so personal,
as if just for me –
yet I know others are waking too.

I face the morning sun in silence,
my eyelids closed and glowing,
warming in the light.

So I offer up this blessed cup of quiet,
steeped and ready to pour out,
just for you.

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And When From Death I’m Free: I Tell You a Mystery

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Trust your bones
Trust the pull of the earth
And the earth itself
Trust the hearts of trees
The stone at the edge of the sea
And all else true

Trust that water will bear you up
Trust the moon to keep faith
With ebb and flow
Trust the leafing
The chrysalis, the seed
And every other way
Death gives birth to resurrection
~Bethany Lee, “To Keep Faith” from The Breath Between

Over the last several weeks, roots have become shoots and their green blades are rising chaotically, uneven and awkward like a bad haircut.  And like a bad haircut, another two weeks will make all the difference — sprouts will cover all the bare earth, breaking through crusted soil to create a smooth carpet of green.

There is nothing more mysterious than the barren made fruitful, the ugly made beautiful, the dead made alive.

The muddy winter field of my heart will recover, bathed in new light;
I trust love will come again like shoots that spring up green.

Behold! I tell you a mystery. We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we shall be changed…
1 Corinthians 15:51–52

This Lenten season I reflect on the words of the 19th century southern spiritual hymn “What Wondrous Love is This”

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For My Soul: Hidden Grain

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  “All Christian thinking is resurrection thinking.” —Jay Parini
Let this sorrow be a fallow field
and grief the seeding rain.
Then may I be hidden, a grain
in night’s still mystery,
until the day
I’m risen, yield
bound in sheaves of joy,
and Negev is an ecstasy.
~Franchot Ballinger, “Let Me Be Like Those Who Dream” from Crossings

Ears of Wheat – Vincent Van Gogh
Wheat Field with Sheaves -Vincent Van Gogh
Sheaves of Wheat in a Field –Vincent Van Gogh

The love of God most High for our soul
is so wonderful that it surpasses all
knowledge. No created being can fully know
the greatness, the sweetness, the
tenderness, of the love that our Maker has
for us. By his Grace and help therefore let
us in spirit stand in awe and gaze, eternally
marveling at the supreme, surpassing,
single-minded, incalculable love that God,
Who is all goodness, has for us.
~Juliana of Norwich “God’s Love for Us”

…you have been born again, not of perishable seed but of imperishable, through the living and abiding word of God;  for

“All flesh is like grass
    and all its glory like the flower of grass.
The grass withers,
    and the flower falls,
 but the word of the Lord remains forever.”
1Peter 1:23-25

The fields around our farm still show no signs of wakening.
They are stubble and moss, mole hills and mud.
It is unimaginable they might soon produce anything.

Then grief rains down on buried seed and the grain will rise.

All winter everything, everyone,
has been so dead, so hidden, so hopeless;
His touch calls us back to life.
Nothing can be more hopeful than the barren made fruitful,
the ugly made beautiful,
the dead made alive.

Love is come again, digging deep
into the fallow fields of our hearts.

This Lenten season I reflect on the words of the 19th century southern spiritual hymn “What Wondrous Love is This”

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How Generous the Ground

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Once again, the field rehearses how to die.
Some of the grass turns golden first. Some
simply fades into brown. Just this morning,
I, too, lay in corpse pose, practicing
how to let myself be totally held by the earth
without striving, how to meet the day
without rushing off to do the next necessary
or beautiful thing. Soon, the grass will bend
or break, molder or disintegrate. Every year,
the same lesson in how to join the darkness,
how to be unmade, how quietly
we might lean into the uncertainty,
how generous the ground.
~Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer “Shavasana”

The prairie grasses are collapsing,
withering to the ground,
all spent after a season of flourishing.
The next wind and rain storm will finish the job.
Stems and leaves become rich compost
in the seasons that follow,
a generous bed for future seeds.

We expect this fading away.

I know it doesn’t mean the end –
there is still vitality lying dormant,
hidden away, waiting for the right moment
to re-emerge, resurrect and live again.

I know this too about myself.
The dying-time-of-year doesn’t get easier.
It seems more real-time and vivid.
Colors fade, leaves wrinkle and dry,
fruit falls unconsumed and softened. 

Our beauty, so evident only a short time ago,
is meant to thrive inward, germinating,
ready to rise again when called forth.

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Each Thing Noticed

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The Old Testament book of Micah answers the question
of why we are here with another:
“What doth the Lord require of thee but to do justly,
and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?”
We are here to abet creation and to witness it,
to notice each thing so each thing gets noticed.
Together we notice not only each mountain shadow
and each stone on the beach
but we notice each other’s beautiful face
and complex nature so that creation need not play
to an empty house.
~Annie Dillard from Life Magazine’s “The Meaning of Life”

I started out a noticer,
a child who crawled on the ground
to follow winding ant trails from their hills,
then watched nests bloom with birds,
sitting still as a lizard sunning himself on a rock.

Next I was a student researcher of great apes,
following wild chimpanzees deep into an exotic forest
to observe their life in a community so much like our own.

Then came a profession and parenting and daughtering,
with mounting responsibilities and worries and cares,
and I stopped noticing any more,
too much inside the drama
to witness it from outside.

Creation played to an empty house
and the empty house was me.

Slowly now,
I’ve returned to noticing again~
buying my ticket, finding my seat,
smiling and nodding
applauding
hooting and hollering
begging for an encore.

It’s a non-stop show of the miraculous
where I’m an appreciative audience
preparing to write a great review.

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The Secrets of September

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The golden-rod is yellow;
The corn is turning brown;
The trees in apple orchards
With fruit are bending down.

The gentian’s bluest fringes
Are curling in the sun;
In dusty pods the milkweed
Its hidden silk has spun.

The sedges flaunt their harvest,
In every meadow nook;
And asters by the brook-side
Make asters in the brook.

From dewy lanes at morning
The grapes’ sweet odors rise;
At noon the roads all flutter
With yellow butterflies.

By all these lovely tokens
September days are here,
With summer’s best of weather,
And autumn’s best of cheer.

But none of all this beauty
Which floods the earth and air
Is unto me the secret
Which makes September fair.

‘Tis a thing which I remember;
To name it thrills me yet:
One day of one September
I never can forget.
~Helen Hunt Jackson “September“

I can choose to fight the inevitable march of time with sighs and sorrows, thus arm myself with sour bitterness for what is no more,

or I can flow unmoved for as long as I can stay afloat,
only passively aware of the passage of all around me,

or I can smile in secret at awakening each morning,
whether to sun or wind or rain,
grateful I’ve been given one more day to get it right,

or at least to care enough to try.

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The Melting Hill

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Light and wind are running
over the headed grass
as though the hill had
melted and now flowed.
~Wendell Berry “June Wind” from New Collected Poems

All that I serve will die, all my delights,
the flesh kindled from my flesh, garden and field,
the silent lilies standing in the woods,
the woods, the hill, the whole earth, all
will burn in man’s evil, or dwindle
in its own age. Let the world bring on me
the sleep of darkness without stars, so I may know
my little light taken from me into the seed
of the beginning and the end, so I may bow
to mystery, and take my stand on the earth
like a tree in a field, passing without haste
or regret toward what will be, my life
a patient willing descent into the grass.
~Wendell Berry “The Wish to be Generous” from Collected Poems

What stood will stand, though all be fallen,
The good return that time has stolen.
Though creatures groan in misery,
Their flesh prefigures liberty
To end travail and bring to birth
Their new perfection in new earth.
At word of that enlivening
Let the trees of the woods all sing
And every field rejoice, let praise
Rise up out of the ground like grass.
What stood, whole in every piecemeal
Thing that stood, will stand though all
Fall–field and woods and all in them
Rejoin the primal Sabbath’s hymn.
~Wendell Berry, from “Sabbaths”

When abundant grasses around our yard and fences were hit hard with rainfall last night, they collapsed under the weight of the moisture.  The 3-4 foot tall tender stems are now lodged and flattened in undulating waves of green, bent over as if to embrace the earth from which they arose. Warmer temperatures are predicted over the next few days, so the grass will recover, drying out enough to stand upright again. A breeze would lift the soaked heads and squeeze out the wet sponge created by collapsed forage– this lodged mess should survive and rise back up. It will be raised and lifted again, pushing up to meet the sun, the stems strengthening and straightening.

What once was heavy laden will lighten;
what was silent and sodden will once again
move and dance and sing with the wind.

And I look for the resurrection of the dead,
And the life of the world to come. Amen. Alleluia
~from the Nicene Creed

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Dandelion Breath

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Just as we lose hope
she ambles in,
a late guest
dragging her hem
of wildflowers,
her torn
veil of mist,
of light rain,
blowing
her dandelion
breath
in our ears;
and we forgive her,
turning from
chilly winter
ways,
we throw off
our faithful
sweaters
and open
our arms.
~Linda Pastan, “Spring” from Heroes in Disguise. 

Spring dawdled this year, arriving at least three weeks behind the usual timeline due to chill winds and soppy ground. I waited impatiently for the transition, begging the first dandelion to appear.

Then it hit. Shocking in its suddenness, a few May days of uncharacteristic 90 degree temperatures, forcing everything to push to the surface and swell to bursting.

We’re playing catch-up. Grasses leaped to jungle height, and bold weeds dominate every square inch.

Now I must adapt to summer heat and smoky horizons; no more sweaters needed when the sweatiness begins.

I already miss Spring’s soft dandelion breath as I swelter in a premature Summer sauna.

Yet all is forgiven, delicate Spring.
You will come ’round again next year. Only you know the timing of your grand entrance when we’ll throw flowers at your feet.

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Fixing Eyes on the Unseen – Living in a Prayer

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Here in the time between snow
and the bud of the rhododendron,
we watch the robins, look into

the gray, and narrow our view
to the patches of wild grasses
coming green. The pile of ashes

in the fireplace, haphazard sticks
on the paths and gardens, leaves
tangled in the ivy and periwinkle

lie in wait against our will. This
drawing near of renewal, of stems
and blossoms, the hesitant return

of the anarchy of mud and seed
says not yet to the blood’s crawl.
When the deer along the stream

look back at us, we know again
we have left them. We pull
a blanket over us when we sleep.

As if living in a prayer, we say
amen to the late arrival of red,
the stun of green, the muted yellow

at the end of every twig. We will
lift up our eyes unto the trees hoping
to discover a gnarled nest within

the branches’ negative space. And
we will watch for a fox sparrow
rustling in the dead leaves underneath.
~Jack Ridl, “Here in Time Between” from Practicing to Walk Like a Heron.

“Do you remember the Shire, Mr. Frodo? It’ll be spring soon. And the orchards will be in blossom. And the birds will be nesting in the hazel thicket. And they’ll be sowing the summer barley in the lower fields… and eating the first of the strawberries with cream. Do you remember the taste of strawberries?”
―  J.R.R. Tolkien

In our despairing and wintery moments,
we recollect and hold on to memories most precious to us, like a prayer,
recalling what makes each moment, indeed life itself, special and worthwhile. 

Something so seemingly simple becomes most cherished and retrievable:
the aroma of cinnamon in a warm kitchen,
the splash of new buds forming on orchard branches,
the cooing of mourning doves as spring light begins to dawn,
the velvety softness of a newborn foal’s fur,
the taste of sweet berries in late spring.

Renewal is happening around us –
and if we dig deep in our longing hearts,
renewal happens within as well.

Death will not have the final word.

Amen and again, Amen.

Do you remember the Shire, Mr. Frodo?  Do you remember?

This year’s Lenten theme:
So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.
2 Corinthians 4: 18

Taking a Moment to Thank the Light

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Now a red, sleepy sun above the rim
Of twilight stares along the quiet weald,
And the kind, simple country shines revealed
In solitudes of peace, no longer dim.
The old horse lifts his face and thanks the light,
Then stretches down his head to crop the green.
All things that he has loved are in his sight;
The places where his happiness has been
Are in his eyes, his heart, and they are good.
~Siegfried Sassoon from “Break of Day”

We grow older along with our horses – as we near seventy, our oldest mare is thirty years old. None of us, horses or humans, have to climb in the harness to pull the heavy loads of our former work lives.

During these October days, as the horses feel the morning sun on their withers and the green blades under their feet, they scan the pasture for the sweetest tender patch to munch in the fields they know and love so well. They nap more now than in their younger years, taking breaks to let their heads hang relaxed and nodding, their tails slowly swishing at flies.

To be honest, I nap and nod more now as well.

They remind me to borrow the calm of the pasture to balance the noise and misery always present in the morning headlines. Carrying that calm to my decades of work as a physician was an essential survival skill. I remembered how peace and light intentionally descended to a troubled earth in sore need of healing.

A new day’s sunlight breaks fresh each morning and sinks gently and quietly beneath the horizon each evening. All things I love are within my sight; happiness and contentment do grow, like the grass beneath my feet, thanks to the Light.

And I am glad, so very glad that it is good.

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