Category: harvest

The Rustling Maize

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A dim veil hangs over the landscape and flood,
And the hills are all mellowed in haze,
While Fall, creeping on like a monk ‘neath his hood,
Plucks the thick-rustling wealth of the maize.

And long for this manna that springs from the sod
Shall we gratefully give Him the praise,
The source of all bounty, our Father and God,
Who sent us from heaven the maize!
~William Fosdick “The Maize”

Come, boys, sing!—
                               Sing of the yellow corn,
                           Sing, boys, sing,
                               Sing of the yellow corn!
He springeth up from the fallow soil,
With the blade so green and tall,
And he payeth well the reaper’s toil,
When the husks in the autumn fall.
              The pointed leaves,
                  And the golden ear,
              The rustling sheaves,
                  In the ripened year—
                            Sing, boys, sing!
                               Sing of the yellow corn,
                            Sing, boys, sing,
                               Sing of the yellow corn.

He drinks the rain in the summer long,
And he loves the streams that run,
And he sends the stalk so stout and strong,
To bask in the summer sun.
              The pointed leaves,
                   And the golden ear,
              The rustling sheaves,
                   In the ripened year—
                              Sing, boys, sing!
                                  Sing of the yellow corn,
                              Sing, boys, sing,
                                  Sing of the yellow corn.

He loves the dews of the starry night,
And the breathing wind that plays
With his tassels green, when the mellow light
Of the moon on the meadow stays.
              The pointed leaves,
                   And the golden ear,
              The rustling sheaves,
                   In the ripened year—
                              Sing, boys, sing!
                                  Sing of the yellow corn,
                              Sing, boys, sing,
                                  Sing of the yellow corn.

A glorious thing is the yellow corn,
With the blade so green and tall,
A blessed thing is the yellow corn,
When the husks in the autumn fall.
              Then, sing, boys, sing!
                  Sing of the yellow corn,
              Sing, boys, sing,
                  Sing of the yellow corn!
                     The pointed leaves,
                          And the golden ear,
                     The rustling sheaves,
                          In the ripened year—
                              Come, sing, boys, sing!
                                   Sing of the yellow corn,
                               Sing, boys, sing,
                                   Sing of the yellow corn.
~Charles Eastman “The Yellow Corn”

The dying autumn garden can feel like a treasure hunt as we pull out and sort through the dead and dying vines and stalks: a giant zucchini growing undetected under leaves, a rotting pumpkin collapsing into itself, fat hollowed beans ready to burst with seed.

Everything is dry and rustling in the north winds.

The greatest Easter Egg of all hidden away in husk and cornsilk is glass gem corn. It grew on stunted stalks with few apparent ears, so pitiful next to our robust sweet corn crop.

It fooled us; this corn is pure gold in a kaleidoscope Thanksgiving display – purely ornamental since it doesn’t grow prolific like a sweet yellow corn. Yet these meager ears glow like stained glass, colorful quilt swatches on a stalk.

God has a palette of heaven-sent color and imagination. People come in all colors too, thanks to His artistry, but not nearly so varied as these kernels of colored glass.

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Richly Spiced Residue

barnstormingblog1 Comment

Another year gone, leaving everywhere
its rich spiced residues: vines, leaves,

the uneaten fruits crumbling damply
in the shadows…

I try to remember when time’s measure
painfully chafes, for instance when autumn

flares out at the last, boisterous and like us longing
to stay – how everything lives, shifting

from one bright vision to another, forever
in these momentary pastures.
~Mary Oliver from Fall Song

To let your body
love this world
that gave itself to your care
in all of its ripeness,
with ease,
and will take itself from you
in equal ripeness and ease,
is also harvest.
And however sharply
you are tested –
this sorrow, that great love –
it too will leave on that clean knife.
~Jane Hirshfield from “Ripeness” from “The October Palace”

What is left in the trees in November
is crumbling away:
bright while fading,
dimpling and softening,
composted in the rain.

Perhaps this describes me too.

More than just spicy residue dangling by a stem,
let me still feed whoever is hungry,
to thrive on what little I have left to offer.

Might I ripen a bit at harvest
before the inevitable drop,
to sleep enveloped by the ground.

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A World Going to Pieces

barnstormingblog6 Comments

Here is the world.
Beautiful and terrible things will happen.
Don’t be afraid.
~Frederich Buechner

…the heart of this country does not beat in Washington, DC, nor does its soul lie in a seat of power, nor does its destiny lie in which party occupies which section of government.

No, those things all lie with… people like you and me, people who get up and go to work and love their tiny plot of Earth and whose hands are rough and hardened by loving and giving.
~Billy Coffey from “The Heart of this Land”

Even if I knew that tomorrow the world would go to pieces, I would still plant my apple tree.
~Martin Luther

…as the land around turns rocky and hollow…
I’d never suspected: every day,
Although the nation is done for,
I find new flowers.
~Donald Revell from “Election Year”

This morning I search for any hint of beauty
trying its best to thrive in
the rocky hollowed-out cracks of our foundation.

I look for something (anything)
kind and gentle and hopeful to share here.

But we, the people, have chosen a vengeful meanness to rule us,
to crush, bloody and fracture us apart.

I fear beauty and goodness have gone into hiding.

Even so, we are reminded of
Words spoken again and again and again
to a troubled world:

if only we can hear them for ourselves
if only we can reassure one another
to keep planting, growing, feeding
and caring for one another

The Son came to be with us
when we needed saving from ourselves,
and will not abandon us:

do not be afraid
do not be afraid
do not be afraid

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A Slow and Radiant Happening

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In heaven it is always autumn. The leaves are always near
to falling there but never fall, and pairs of souls out walking
heaven’s paths no longer feel the weight of years upon them.
Safe in heaven’s calm, they take each other’s arm,
the light shining through them, all joy and terror gone.
But we are far from heaven here, in a garden ragged and unkept
as Eden would be with the walls knocked down, the paths littered
with the unswept leaves of many years, bright keepsakes
for children of the Fall. The light is gold, the sun pulling
the long shadow soul out of each thing, disclosing an outcome.
The last roses of the year nod their frail heads,
like listeners listening to all that’s said, to ask,
What brought us here? What seed? What rain? What light?
What forced us upward through dark earth? What made us bloom?
What wind shall take us soon, sweeping the garden bare?
Their voiceless voices hang there, as ours might,
if we were roses, too. Their beds are blanketed with leaves,
tended by an absent gardener whose life is elsewhere.
It is the last of many last days. Is it enough?
To rest in this moment? To turn our faces to the sun?
To watch the lineaments of a world passing?
To feel the metal of a black iron chair, cool and eternal,
press against our skin? To apprehend a chill as clouds
pass overhead, turning us to shivering shade and shadow?
And then to be restored, small miracle, the sun shining brightly
as before? We go on, you leading the way, a figure
leaning on a cane that leaves its mark on the earth.
My friend, you have led me farther than I have ever been.
To a garden in autumn. To a heaven of impermanence
where the final falling off is slow, a slow and radiant happening.
The light is gold. And while we’re here, I think it must
    be heaven.
~Elizabeth Spires from “In Heaven it is Always Autumn” from Now the Green Blade Rises

The Bench by Manet

We wander our autumn garden mystified at the passing of the weeks since seed was first sown, weeds pulled, peapods picked. It could not possibly be done so soon–this patch of productivity and beauty, now wilted and brown, vines crushed to the ground, no longer fruitful.

The root cellar is filling up, the freezer packed. The work of putting away is almost done.

So why do I go back to the now barren soil my husband so carefully worked, numb in the knowledge I will pick no more this season, feel the burst of a cherry tomato exploding in my mouth or the green freshness of a bean straight off the vine?

Because for a few fertile weeks, only a few weeks, the garden was a bit of heaven on earth, impermanent but a real taste nonetheless. 

We may have mistaken Him for the gardener when He appeared to us radiant, suddenly unfamiliar. He offered the care of the garden, to bring in the sheaves, to share the forever mercies in the form of daily bread grown right here and now.

When He says my name, I will know Him. 

And the light is golden.

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Attempting to Stopper Time

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…the golden hour of the clock of the year.
Everything that can run to fruit has already done so:
round apples, oval plums, bottom-heavy pears,
black walnuts and hickory nuts annealed in their shells,
the woodchuck with his overcoat of fat.
Flowers that were once bright as a box of crayons
are now seed heads and thistle down.
All the feathery grasses shine in the slanted light.
It’s time to bring in the lawn chairs and wind chimes,
time to draw the drapes against the wind,
time to hunker down.
Summer’s fruits are preserved in syrup,
but nothing can stopper time.
No way to seal it in wax or amber;
it slides though our hands like a rope of silk.
At night, the moon’s restless searchlight sweeps across the sky.
~Barbara Crooker “And Now it’s October” from Small Rain.

I do try to stopper time.

I try every day on this page,
not to suspend time or render it frozen,
but like flowers and fruit that wither,
I want to preserve these moments –
a few harvested words and pictures
to sample some chilly day.

I offer it up to you now,
a bit of fragrance,
to sip of its sweetness
as it glows, luminous in the bottle.

Let’s share.
Leave it unstoppered.
The passage of time
is meant to be preserved this way.

photo by Josh Scholten
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When Yellow Leaves, or None, or Few…

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That time of year thou mayst in me behold
When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang
Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,
Bare ruin’d choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.

In me thou see’st the twilight of such day
As after sunset fadeth in the west,
Which by and by black night doth take away,
Death’s second self, that seals up all in rest.

In me thou see’st the glowing of such fire
That on the ashes of his youth doth lie,
As the death-bed whereon it must expire,
Consum’d with that which it was nourish’d by.

This thou perceiv’st, which makes thy love more strong,
To love that well which thou must leave ere long.
~William Shakespeare Sonnet 73

I used to think youth has it all
– strength, beauty, energy-
but now I know better.

There is deep treasure in slowing down,
this leisurely leave-taking;
the finite becoming infinite
with limitless loving.

Without our aging
we’d never change up
who we are
so as to become so much more:

enriched, vibrant,
shining passionately
until the very last moment
of letting go.

To love well
To love strong
To love as if
To love because
nothing else matters.

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Pure State of Light

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How hard it is to take September
straight—not as a harbinger
of something harder.

Merely like suds in the air, cool scent
scrubbed clean of meaning—or innocent
of the cold thing coldly meant.

How hard the heart tugs at the end
of summer, and longs to haul it in
when it flies out of hand

at the prompting of the first mild breeze.
It leaves us by degrees
only, but for one who sees

summer as an absolute,
Pure State of Light and Heat, the height
to which one cannot raise a doubt,

as soon as one leaf’s off the tree
no day following can fall free
of the drift of melancholy.
~Mary Jo Salter “Absolute September”

Only nine days left of summer –
I search the skies for what might be left of it.

The mornings lighten later,
evenings darken sooner.

How can I not sadden at the change?

Yet this is where I am in life,
this time of bringing inside the garden and orchard
to savor and salvage before the rains come.

The light leaves behind ripened fruit of foraged memories;
in the darkening, its purity sweetens over time.

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Zucchini Chronicles

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Recite fifty zucchini recipes!                                                                                     Zucchini tempura; creamed soup;                                                                                 sauté with olive oil and cumin,                                                                                casserole of lamb; baked                                                                                             topped with cheese; marinated;                                                                                stuffed; stewed….

Sneak out before dawn to drop                                                                                              them in other people’s gardens,                                                                                            in baby buggies at churchdoors.

 Shot, smuggling zucchini into                                                                                               mailboxes, a federal offense.
~Marge Piercy from “Attack of the Squash People”

The trouble is, you cannot grow just one zucchini. Minutes after you plant a single seed, hundreds of zucchini will barge out of the ground and sprawl around the garden, menacing the other vegetables. At night, you will be able to hear the ground quake as more and more zucchinis erupt.
~Dave Barry

One day we came home from some errands to find a grocery sack of [zucchini] hanging on our mailbox. The perpetrator, of course, was nowhere in sight … Garrison Keillor says July is the only time of year when country people lock our cars in the church parking lot, so people won’t put squash on the front seat. I used to think that was a joke.
~Barbara Kingsolver

It started innocently enough in April
with two-leaf seedlings labeled green and golden;
non-descript squash plants harboring
vast potential.

By June the plants crept across the ground with vines
reaching past the beans to threaten the cucumbers:
going where no vine has gone before,
to divide and conquer, leaving no dust untouched.

July buds formed blossoms inviting bees deep
into yellow-throated pollen pools
thickening within days to elongated flesh:
fecundity in action before our eyes.

The finger-like projections at first harvested
too small, but temptation overwhelms patience;
sauted, grilled with garlic, superb in
supreme simplicity.

But come back a day later: hose-like vines
pumping into each squash, progressive inflation like
balloon-man creations to be twisted and transformed,
but too plump, too distended, too insatiable.

It’s a race to keep up with the pace of production
eat some, give them away, leave on doorsteps like abandoned kittens,
in boxes in church lobbies, lunch rooms at work,
food banks posting signs: “No more zucchini please!”

They march in formation in the garden path
as they are yanked swelling from their umbilical cords
and lined up, stacked, multiplying
like the broom fragments of the “Sorcerer’s Apprentice”.

Once tossed on to the compost pile,
they rest in intimate embrace through heated decomposition
in dead of winter, amid steam rising,
a seedling, innocent enough, pokes through exploding with potential~

Run for your lives!

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Transfiguring the Trivial

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A sudden light transfigures a trivial thing,
a weather-vane, a wind-mill, a winnowing flail,
the dust in the barn door; a moment,- –
and the thing has vanished, because it was pure effect;
but it leaves a relish behind it,
a longing that the accident may happen again.
~Walter Pater from “The Renaissance”

Man Scything Hay by Todd Reifers
dust motes and insects in the barn

Summer ends now; now, barbarous in beauty, the stooks rise
Around; up above, what wind-walks! what lovely behaviour
Of silk-sack clouds! has wilder, wilful-wavier
Meal-drift moulded ever and melted across skies?

I walk, I lift up, I lift up heart, eyes,
Down all that glory in the heavens to glean our Saviour;
And eyes, heart, what looks, what lips yet give you a
Rapturous love’s greeting of realer, of rounder replies?

And the azurous hung hills are his world-wielding shoulder
Majestic – as a stallion stalwart, very-violet-sweet! –
These things, these things were here and but the beholder
Wanting; which two when they once meet,
The heart rears wings bold and bolder
And hurls for him, O half hurls earth for him off under his feet.
~Gerard Manley Hopkins “Hurrahing in Harvest”

The accident of light does happen,
again and again,
but when I least expect it. 

I need to be ready for it; in a blink, it can be gone. 

Yet in that moment,
everything is changed and transformed forever. 

The thing itself,
trivial and transient becomes something other, 
merely because of how it is illuminated. 

And so am I, trivial and transient,
lit from outside myself, winnowed and
transfigured by a love and sacrifice
that I can never deserve.

It was and is no accident.

My heart is readies for earth to be hurled to heaven’s Light.

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And So It Goes…

barnstormingblog4 Comments

Toward the end of August I begin to dream about fall, how
this place will empty of people, the air will get cold and
leaves begin to turn. Everything will quiet down, everything
will become a skeleton of its summer self. Toward

the end of August I get nostalgic for what’s to come, for
that quiet time, time alone, peace and stillness, calm, all
those things the summer doesn’t have. The woodshed is
already full, the kindling’s in, the last of the garden soon

will be harvested, and then there will be nothing left to do
but watch fall play itself out, the earth freeze, winter come.
~David Budbill “Toward the End of August”

As the calendar page flips to September this morning, I feel sad for what we leave behind, while knowing what is coming.

Summer is filled with so much overwhelming activity due to 18 hours of daylight accompanying weeks of unending sunny weather resulting in never-enough-sleep. Waking on a summer morning is brim full with possibilities: there are places to go, people who visit, new things to explore and of course, a garden and orchard bearing and fruiting out of control.

As early September days usher us toward autumn, our older grandchildren will adjust to a more predictable routine of school days, ripe with learning opportunities. Great teachers will lead them into vast new worlds of knowledge.

My teacher friend Bonnie coordinates an innovative introduction to fifth grade by asking her students, with some parental assistance, to make (from scratch) their own personalized school desks that will go home with them at the end of the school year. These students create their own learning center with both brains and hands, applying wood-burned and painted designs, with inspirational quotes for daily encouragement. Their desks represent a solid reminder of what they leave behind each year, while striving to become something new.

And so it goes, year after year.

I am wistful about September’s quiet commencement despite no school or job to return to. There is a cool freshness in the air as breezes begin to pluck and toss a few drying leaves from the trees. 

I watch the days play themselves out. No longer do I feel I must direct each moment. 

And so it goes, and so it goes.
And you are the only one who knows.

Mrs. Bonnie Patterson’s fifth graders’ handmade desks
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