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”
The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes,
The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes
Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening,
Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains,
Let fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys,
Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap,
And seeing that it was a soft October night,
Curled once about the house, and fell asleep.
~T.S. Eliot from “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”
When I was young, fog felt oppressive, as mournful as the fog horns sounding continually in the nearby bay.
Now in late middle age, I appreciate fog for slowing me down when life compels me to rush too fast.
When forced to take time, I begin to notice what I missed before:
clouds descend to hug and kiss the ground to bejewel everything they touch.
Today the dead and dying became glorious in subtle beauty,
the farm became all gossamer garland and transparent pearls…
After the keen still days of September, the October sun filled the world with mellow warmth…
The maple tree in front of the doorstep burned like a gigantic red torch.
The oaks along the roadway glowed yellow and bronze.
The fields stretched like a carpet of jewels, emerald and topaz and garnet.
Everywhere she walked the color shouted and sang around her…
In October any wonderful unexpected thing might be possible.
~Elizabeth George Speare from The Witch of Blackbird Pond
I cannot endure to waste anything so precious as autumnal sunshine by staying in the house.
~Nathaniel Hawthorne
He found himself wondering at times, especially in the autumn, about the wild lands, and strange visions of mountains that he had never seen came into his dreams.”
~ J.R.R. Tolkien from The Fellowship of the Ring
The mere brute pleasure of reading–the sort of pleasure a cow has in grazing.
~G.K. Chesterton
Setting me loose in a room of books is like cows let out on green grass — so much to consume, so little time. I’ll nibble away, blade by blade, page by page, word by word, but the greatest pleasure of all is settling down into a good long cud chewing session, redigesting and mulling over what I’ve already taken in.
It is brute pleasure to take in words that grow roots so deep they never go away, words that sustain and make me grow and keep me alive. Words illuminate from without and within.
Something to chew on.
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.
The cattle crouched round them in soft shadowy clumps, placidly munching, and dreaming with wide-open eyes. The narrow zone of colour created by the firelight was like the planet Earth – a little freak of brightness in a universe of impenetrable shadows.
~Hope Mirrlees
Sometimes I feel I am dreaming awake with wide-open eyes. There is a slow motion quality to time as it flows from one hour to the next to the next. Everything becomes more vivid as in a dream — the sounds of birds, the smell of the farm, the depth of the greens in the landscape, the taste of fresh plums, the intensity of every breath, the reason for being.
The rest of time, in its rush and blur, can feel like sleepwalking, my eyes open but unseeing. I stumble through life’s shadows, the path indiscernible, my future uncertain, my purpose illusive.
Wake me to dream some more. I want to chew on it again and again, savoring.
I believe a leaf of grass is no less than the journey-work of the stars.
~Walt Whitman
All photos were taken this week while walking past Western Washington University garden plots on my way to and from meetings on campus. My routine tasks, my everyday journeyman duties, are rendered extraordinary in the light of petals, pollen, webs, pigment, fruit, seed pods and always, always the nurture of soil and rain. I chanced upon a gardener yesterday and told him the difference his work makes in my day. The rich visual and tactile variety in the gardens is like star-lit nebulae and galaxies scattered about in planter pots and plots.
He looked up, startled, so used to not being noticed, and simply said, “it’s been a good year for the plants.”
Indeed it is. A good year for us all.
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
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
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
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
I went to bed and woke in the middle of the night thinking I heard someone cry, thinking I myself was weeping, and I felt my face and it was dry.
Then I looked at the window and thought: Why, yes, it’s just the rain, the rain, always the rain, and turned over, sadder still, and fumbled about for my dripping sleep and tried to slip it back on.
~Ray Bradbury
After weeks of dry weather and only an occasional shower, it was relief to wake to the pattering and dripping, an old familiar friend returned in the dark of night.
Weeping clouds and misty eyes are not always from sadness. They can shed sweet tears, wistful wondrous full-to-the-brim tears.
This is how it was as I slipped a dripping sleep back on, lulled by the rhythm of the drops. This is how it is this morning capturing each one where it landed before it disappears forever.
My face will remain damp with the memory.
I 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.
Barnstorming 