Not just the first crocus bulb poking from the ground, but its pollen shining saffronly on the legs of a bee.
The reverberations of a hammered dulcimer or the puff of sweetness escaping between peel and pith of a ripe tangelo.
It’s riding the elevator after the doctor tells you, we can’t say why the scans are suddenly clear, or, if you’re exhausted from trying, time to surround yourself with people you love. It’s waking
in the middle of the night, looking out at the silhouettes of trees and realizing there is nothing lonely about silence. It’s cruising a wide-open Montana highway
or swinging your hips to the rhythm of a street-corner bucket drummer and daring the stares. It’s not the cicada blooming from its shell as much
as the shell itself, balanced on the finger of a little girl, then tumbling along the grass tips among the unkillable dandelions. ~Tania Runyan from “What It’s Like to Rise Again”
We’re each given a fresh start each day; even when it was a fitful sleep, and we’re fearful about what comes next, or if there will even be a “next”…
Jesus explains what it is like to rise above the darkness; bold, unafraid, leaving behind, neatly folded, the vestiges of death.
He gives us each reason to get up every morning, surrounded by those who love us.
Even when crushed and broken, He rose up so we can follow.
Everything’s going to be all right…
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Further in Summer than the Birds Pathetic from the Grass A minor Nation celebrates Its unobtrusive Mass.
No Ordinance be seen So gradual the Grace A pensive Custom it becomes Enlarging Loneliness.
Antiquest felt at Noon When August burning low Arise this spectral Canticle Repose to typify
Remit as yet no Grace No Furrow on the Glow Yet a Druidic Difference Enhances Nature now ~Emily Dickinson
“…one of the great poems of American literature. The statement of the poem is profound; it remarks the absolute separation between man and nature at a precise moment in time. The poet looks as far as she can into the natural world, but what she sees at last is her isolation from that world. She perceives, that is, the limits of her own perception. But that, we reason, is enough. This poem of just more than sixty words comprehends the human condition in relation to the universe:
So gradual the Grace A pensive Custom it becomes Enlarging Loneliness.
But this is a divine loneliness, the loneliness of a species evolved far beyond all others. The poem bespeaks a state of grace. In its precision, perception and eloquence it establishes the place of words within that state. Words are indivisible with the highest realization of human being.” ~N. Scott Momaday from The Man Made of Words
On the first day I took his class on Native American Mythology and Lore in 1974 at Stanford, N.Scott Momaday strolled to the front, wrote the 60 words of this Dickinson poem on the blackboard. He told us we would spend at least a week working out the meaning of what he considered the greatest poem written — this in a class devoted to Native American writing and oral tradition. In his resonant bass, he read the poem to us many times, rolling the words around his mouth as if to extract their sweetness. This man of the plains, a member of the Kiowa tribe, loved this poem put together by a New England recluse poet — someone as culturally distant from him and his people as possible.
But grace works to unite us, no matter our differences, and Scott knew this as he led us, mostly white students, through this poem. What on the surface appears a paean to late summer cricket song doomed to extinction by oncoming winter, is a statement of the transcendence of man beyond our understanding of nature and the world in which we, its creatures, find ourselves.
As summer begins its descent into the dark death of winter, we, unlike the crickets, become all too aware we too are descending, particularly when the skies are filled with smoke from uncontrolled wildfires in the north, the east and the south. There is no one as lonely as an individual facing their mortality and no one as lonely as a poet facing the empty page, in search of words to describe the sacrament of sacrifice and perishing.
Yet the Word brings Grace unlike any other, even when the cricket song, pathetic and transient as it is, is gone. The Word brings Grace, like no other, to pathetic and transient man who will emerge transformed.
There is no furrow on the glow. There is no need to plow and seed our salvaged souls, already lovingly planted and nurtured by our Creator God, yielding a fruited plain.
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Light wakes us – there’s the sun climbing the mountains’ rim, spilling across the valley, finding our faces. It is July, between the hay and harvest, a time at arm’s length from all other time, the roads ragged with meadowsweet and mallow, with splays of seedheads, slubbed and coarse, rough linen. The fields above the house, clotted with sheep all spring, are empty now and froth with flowering grasses, still in the morning light. Birds move around the leafy fields, the leafy garden.
It is the time to set aside all vigil, good or ill, to loosen the fixed gaze of our attention as dandelions let seedlings to the wind. Wake with the light. Get up and go about the day and watch its surfaces that brighten with the sun.
And later, when the light is drowsed and heavy go find the burdened fruit trees where the shade lies splashed and opened-out across the ground. Spread over it a quilt worn soft by other bodies, then curl and fall down into sleep at light.
Awaken to a world of long, loose grass-stems, and leaves above, and birds, breaking out of the leaves. ~Kerry Hardie from “Sleep in Summer”
Saying good-bye to July last week meant admitting summer is already half-baked and so are we–
we who are still doughy, not nearly done enough.
The rush to autumn is breathless. We want to hold on tight to our longish days, fall asleep in the grasses, endure sweaty nights for just a little while longer…
Please, oh please grant us unending light and steady us for the task of getting ready for letting go.
A new series of summer photo notecards from our farm is now available as a thank you gift to you for your financial support of Barnstorming — details here
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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
Cut grass lies frail: Brief is the breath Mown stalks exhale. Long, long the death
It dies in the white hours Of young-leafed June With chestnut flowers, With hedges snowlike strewn,
White lilac bowed, Lost lanes of Queen Anne’s lace, And that high-builded cloud Moving at summer’s pace. ~Philip Larkin “Cut Grass” from The Complete Poems
June is the month when grass grows exponentially, taking over all open spaces and every nook and cranny
Light and wind work magic on a field of flowing tall grass. The blades of the mower lay it to the ground in green streams that course up and down the slopes. It lies orderly in stoneless cemetery rows.
Farmer’s fields are lined with rows of mown grass, a precious commodity to be harvested for the livestock to eat the rest of the year. Some of the green is bagged up like big marshmallows for easy storage and some put in silos for later in the winter.
The shorn grass is critical to the life of the animals we raise.
What was once waving and bowing to the wind is cut and crushed: no longer bending but bent, no longer flowing but flown, no longer growing but mown.
At summer’s pace, while the clouds saunter overhead, grasses are stored as fodder for the beasts of the farm on those cold nights when the wind beats at the doors.
It will melt in their mouths. As we watch them chew, we’ll remember overflowing abundance of those summer days in June.
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Not much to me is yonder lane Where I go every day; But when there’s been a shower of rain And hedge-birds whistle gay, I know my lad that’s out in France With fearsome things to see Would give his eyes for just one glance At our white hawthorn tree.
. . . .
Not much to me is yonder lane Where he so longs to tread: But when there’s been a shower of rain I think I’ll never weep again Until I’ve heard he’s dead. ~Siegfried Sassoon“The Hawthorn Tree”
There we shall rest and we shall see; we shall see and we shall love; we shall love and we shall praise. Behold what shall be in the end and shall not end. ~St. Augustine: ‘The City of God,’ Bk. XXII, Chap. 30.
The cows know. Standing still in the pasture, chewing cud and steadily swishing flies. With those enormous eyes, they look for all the world as if they know.
The wind knows. It whispers to the grass. The grass tells the trees who pass it on to the birds. The crickets discover it all on their own.
But you and I, we don’t. Though on a day like today when the sun is bright and the cattails let loose a flurry of tiny parachutes, we sense there’s something the world knows.
A man crosses the street in rain, stepping gently, looking two times north and south, because his son is asleep on his shoulder.
No car must splash him. No car drive too near to his shadow.
This man carries the world’s most sensitive cargo but he’s not marked. Nowhere does his jacket say FRAGILE, HANDLE WITH CARE.
His ear fills up with breathing. He hears the hum of a boy’s dream deep inside him.
We’re not going to be able to live in this world if we’re not willing to do what he’s doing with one another.
The road will only be wide. The rain will never stop falling. ~Naomi Shihab Nye “Shoulder” from Red Suitcase
And just what is it that we should know? What are we missing that the cows, the wind, the trees, the grass, the birds, the crickets, the cattails, and certainly dogs know that we struggle to understand?
Simply this: be content, live aware of each moment as it comes, be grateful for it and say so, then have hope for the next moment, no matter how hard it may be.
Cherish whatever and whoever depends on us, love them with all we’ve got. Provide the shoulder that someone else needs. Give ourselves away without expecting something in return. Write it down so it is not lost.
We can see it deep in our dogs’ eyes. They know.
photo by Nate Gibson
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No speed of wind or water rushing by But you have speed far greater. You can climb Back up a stream of radiance to the sky, And back through history up the stream of time. And you were given this swiftness, not for haste Nor chiefly that you may go where you will, But in the rush of everything to waste, That you may have the power of standing still- Off any still or moving thing you say. Two such as you with such a master speed Cannot be parted nor be swept away From one another once you are agreed That life is only life forevermore Together wing to wing and oar to oar ~Robert Frost “Master Speed”
I’m going out to clean the pasture spring; I’ll only stop to rake the leaves away (And wait to watch the water clear, I may): I sha’n’t be gone long.—You come too.
I’m going out to fetch the little calf That’s standing by the mother. It’s so young, It totters when she licks it with her tongue. I sha’n’t be gone long.—You come too. ~Robert Frost “The Pasture”
An Epithalamion
Today, the day the pasture gate opens after a long winter, you are let out on grass to a world vast and green and lush beyond your wildest imaginings.
You run leaping and bounding, hair flying in the wind, heels kicked up in the freedom to form together this binding trust of covenant love.
You share your rich feast today, as grace grows like grass stretching to eternity, yet bound safely within the fence rows of sacred vows.
When rains come, as hard times always do, and this spring day feels far removed, when buffeted by the winds or mud or frost or drought of life, know your promises were made to withstand any storm.
Even though leaning and breaking, as fences tend to do, they remind you to whom you belong and where home is, anchoring you if you lose your way, pointing you back to the gate opened to you today.
Once there you will remember the gift of commitment: a community of faith and our God has blessed this beckoning gate, these fences, and most of all your love as you feast with joy on the richness of His spring pasture.
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And in despair I bowed my head; “There is no peace on earth,” I said; “For hate is strong, And mocks the song Of peace on earth, good-will to men!”
Then pealed the bells more loud and deep: “God is not dead, nor doth He sleep; The Wrong shall fail, The Right prevail, With peace on earth, good-will to men.” ~Henry Wadsworth Longfellowfrom Christmas Bells
When the song of the angels is stilled, When the star in the sky is gone, When the kings and princes are home, When the shepherds are back with their flock, The work of Christmas begins: To find the lost, To heal the broken, To feed the hungry, To release the prisoner, To rebuild the nations, To bring peace among others, To make music in the heart. ~Howard Thurman “The Work of Christmas”
The core truth of Christ’s birth is that when God became man, he entered the world in a posture of extreme humility and extreme vulnerability, and that posture never changed.
Jesus, God made flesh, spent his life as a carpenter and an itinerant preacher. He proved so vulnerable that he was easily executed by the Roman Empire, with only the tiniest band of followers still clinging to their faith.
And if we who call ourselves Christians are to truly imitate Christ, then shouldn’t we also place little regard on our own worldly status? Jesus told us to take up our own cross, not to nail others to that terrible tree. Yes, Christ is King, but of a very different kind of kingdom, where the first are last, where you love your enemies, where you bless those who persecute you, and where you sacrifice to serve your neighbor. ~David French from Christianity is a Dangerous Faith in the New York TImes -12/21/25
Let the stable still astonish; Straw – dirt floor, dull eyes, Dusty flanks of donkeys, oxen; Crumbling, crooked walls; No bed to carry that pain, And then, the child, Rag-wrapped, laid to cry In a trough. Who would have chosen this? Who would have said: “Yes, Let the God of all the heavens and earth Be born here, in this place?” Who but the same God Who stands in the darker, fouler rooms Of our hearts And says, “Yes, Let the God of Heaven and Earth Be born here – In this place. ~Leslie Leyland Fields “Let the Stable Still Astonish”
During Advent, I am guilty of nostalgia and sentiment, invoking the gentle bedtime story of that silent night, with the infant napping away in a hay-filled manger, His devoted parents hovering, the humble shepherds peering in the stable door.
All is calm. All is bright.
Yet no – this is not a sentimental story. It is astonishing.
God never sleeps.
This is no gentle bedtime story: – a teenage mother gives birth in a smelly cave among domestic animals, with no alternative but to lay her baby in a rough feed trough.
– the heavenly host appears to shepherds – the lowest of the low in society – shouting and singing glories which causes terror.
– Herod’s response to the news that a Messiah had been born is to kill a legion of male children whose parents undoubtedly begged for mercy, clinging to their about-to-be murdered sons.
– a family’s flight to Egypt as refugees seeking asylum so their son would not be yet another victim of Herod.
– Jesus grows up to become itinerant and homeless, tempted while fasting in the wilderness, owns nothing, rejected by His own people, betrayed by His disciples, sentenced to death by acclamation before Pilate, tortured, hung on a cross until He gave up his spirit.
– Jesus understood He was not of this world. He knew the power that originally brought him to earth as a helpless infant lying in an unforgiving stone trough would eventually move the stone covering His tomb.
He would be sacrificed, He would die and rise again, He would return again as King of all nations.
When I hear skeptics scoff at Christianity as a “crutch for the weak”, they underestimate the courage it takes to walk into church each week admitting we are a desperate people seeking rescue. We cling to the life preserver found in the Word, hanging on for dear life. It is only because of grace that we survive the tempests of temptation, shame, guilt and self-doubt to worship an all-knowing God who is not dead and who never ever sleeps.
This bedtime story is not for the faint of heart. It is meant to astonish. The Power invoked created the very dust we are made of, and breathed His life into us.
So be not afraid: the wrong shall fail the Right prevail. He chose this place to be among us. Peace on earth, good-will to men.
The grass withers, the flower fades, But the word of our God stands forever. Isaiah 40:8
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I have been younger in October than in all the months of spring walnut and may leaves the color of shoulders at the end of summer a month that has been to the mountain and become light there the long grass lies pointing uphill even in death for a reason that none of us knows and the wren laughs in the early shade now come again shining glance in your good time naked air late morning my love is for lightness of touch foot feather the day is yet one more yellow leaf and without turning I kiss the light by an old well on the last of the month gathering wild rose hips in the sun ~W.S. Merwin from “The Love of October”from Migration: New & Selected Poems, 2005
Each leaf is beautifully unique, one of a kind, each shaped and hued differently — except those more tattered than others, bespeaking the harshness of their short existence when all life surrounding them seems at risk of being destroyed.
At the end of their allotted life span they return to the earth from which they came. And the Creator-God is pleased. His creations have served the purpose for which He created them. Now, they will enrich the soil, each leaving its own special contribution toward the next generation where differences no longer matter. The unseen birthing and dying mystery continues…. ~Alice La Chapelle, in a comment
The wind gusts through shedding branches stripping them bare, carrying the leaves far away, piling up a diverse gathering they have never known before – chestnut, cherry, birch, walnut, apple, katsura, maple, parrotia, pear, oak, poplar, dogwood – suddenly all sharing the same fate and grave, each wearing a color of its own, soon to blend with the others as all slowly melt to brown.
There is lightness in the letting go, for reasons none of us knows.
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Summer is over, the old cow said, And they’ll shut me up in a draughty shed To milk me by lamplight in the cold, But I won’t give much for I am old. It’s long ago that I came here Gay and slim as a woodland deer; It’s long ago that I heard the roar Of Smith’s white bull by the sycamore. And now there are bones where my flesh should be; My backbone sags like an old roof tree, And an apple snatched in a moment’s frolic Is just so many days of colic.
I’m neither a Jersey nor Holstein now But only a faded sort of cow. My calves are veal and I had as lief That I could lay me down as beef; Somehow, they always kill by halves, — Why not take me when they take my calves? Birch turns yellow and sumac red, I’ve seen this all before, she said, I’m tired of the field and tired of the shed. There’s no more grass, there’s no more clover; Summer is over, summer is over. ~Robert Hillyer “Moo!”
Something inspires the only cow of late To make no more of a wall than an open gate, And think no more of wall-builders than fools. Her face is flecked with pomace and she drools A cider syrup. Having tasted fruit, She scorns a pasture withering to the root. She runs from tree to tree where lie and sweeten The windfalls spiked with stubble and worm-eaten. She leaves them bitten when she has to fly. She bellows on a knoll against the sky. Her udder shrivels and the milk goes dry. ~Robert Frost “The Cow in Apple Time”
I have lived among cows, our own and our neighbors’, dairy and beef, most of my life. Given their status as a food source, cows aren’t always granted a long life, but I do envy those who spend much of the year chewing cud outside in pastoral settings.
We’ve owned some aged cows. They can be set in their ways and don’t particularly like a change in routine. They prefer a communal life, bearing calves, surrendering their milk, and ensuring the herd hierarchy is maintained with a minimum of fuss.
I remember my dad curing a cow’s habit of eating apples directly from a tree branch. She had the apple lodged in her esophagus as it had slipped down her throat unchewed, but too large to pass through to her rumen. She was foaming at the mouth, breathing fine, but the apple was a visible lump palpable mid-way down her neck. My dad grabbed a short two by four board and a hammer, placed the board on one side of her neck lump, and with the hammer, hit her neck precisely over the apple, crushing it. She was immediately cured and sauntered over to grab more apples, off the ground rather than the branch.
Cows can experience various health issues, sometimes relating to infections in their udders, but not infrequently, trouble with their hooves. They can get abscesses which are quite painful until emptied, as well as sharp rocks or gravel wedged into their foot. This sometimes necessitates hoof work done by a specialist who visits dairy farms on a regular basis.
I confess I (along with a million or so other folks) spend an inordinate amount of time watching YouTube channels of cow hoof trimming. I have no desire to do the job myself, but restoring a limping cow to a comfortably walking cow is a skill that must be very gratifying.
As an aging female myself, I know all about aches and pains. I too feel the sadness of summer coming to an end, when the grass and clover grows sparse in the field, and when chilly nights are best spent in the shelter of the barn.
But I’m not yet ready to give up on this sweet pastoral life. There are still some days left, and apples to pick up off the ground, for this fading old cow…
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