Category: leaves

Exactly What I’m Looking For

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cattailtocanada

 

For some reason we like to see days pass,
even though most of us claim we don’t want to reach our last one for a long time.

We examine each day before us with barely a glance and say,
no, this isn’t one I’ve been looking for,
and wait in a bored sort of way for the next, when we are convinced,
our lives will start for real.

Meanwhile, this day is going by perfectly well-adjusted, as some days are,
with the right amounts of sunlight and shade,
and a light breeze scented with a perfume made from the mixture of fallen apples,
corn stubble, dry oak leaves, and the faint odor of last night’s meandering skunk.
~Tom Hennen from “The Life of a Day”

 

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febhydrangea

 

I am ashamed to admit I squander time shamelessly,
waiting for that particular day I always hoped for,
tossing off these mundane but precious hours
as somehow not measuring up or special enough.

The shock is:
there have been over thirty years
of such days on this farm,
one passing by after another,
emerging fresh each morning from the duff and stuff of life,
and every single one has ended up being exactly what I’m looking for.

 

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emergent

Beyond the Reach of Meaning

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danglingleaf1

 

sunset125181

 

At sundown when a day’s words
have gathered at the feet of the trees
lining up in silence
to enter the long corridors
of the roots into which they 
pass one by one thinking
they remember the place
as they feel themselves climbing
away from their only sound
while they are being forgotten
by their bright circumstances
they rise through all the rings
listening again 
afterward as they
listened once and they come
to where the leaves used to live
during their lives but have gone now
and they too take the next step
beyond the reach of meaning
~ W. S. Merwin “To a Leaf Falling in Winter”

 

 

hidenseeksisters

 

“Last forever!” Who hasn’t prayed that prayer? You were lucky to get it in the first place. The present is a freely given canvas. That it is constantly being ripped apart and washed downstream goes without saying.
~Annie Dillard from Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

 

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…writing was one way to let something of lasting value emerge
from the pains and fears of my little, quickly passing life.
Each time life required me to take a new step into unknown spiritual territory,
I felt a deep, inner urge to tell my story to others–
Perhaps as a need for companionship but maybe, too,
out of an awareness that my deepest vocation
is to be a witness to the glimpses of God I have been allowed to catch.
~Henri Nouwen

 

holyleaf

 

leafjanuary

 

For too much of my life I have focused on the future, bypassing the present in my headlong rush to what lies ahead.  There is always a goal to achieve,  a conclusion becoming commencement of the next phase, a sunset turning right around in a few hours to become sunrise.

Yet the most precious times occur when the present is so overwhelming, so riveting, so tenderly full of life that I see a brief glimpse of God.  I must grab hold with all my strength to try and secret it away and keep it forever.  Of course the present still slips away from me, elusive and evasive, torn to bits by the unrelenting movement of time.

Even if I was able to take a photo to lock it to a page or screen, it is not enough.  No matter how I choose to preserve the canvas of the present, it is passed, ebbing away never to return.

I must wonder at the present by focusing less on the foreshortening future.

So I write to harvest those times to make them last a little bit longer.  Maybe not forever; they will inevitably be lost downstream into the ether of unread words.

Even if unread, I am learning that words, which had power in the Beginning to create life,  bring tenderness and meaning back to my life.   How blessed to live the gift twice: not just in the moment itself but in writing words that preserve and treasure it all up, if only for a moment before they fall, completed.

 

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This Restless Heart

barnstormingblog3 Comments

woods30

 

novmapleleaf

 

The stripped and shapely
Maple grieves
The ghosts of her
Departed leaves.
The ground is hard,
As hard as stone.
The year is old,
The birds are flown.
And yet the world,
In its distress,
Displays a certain
Loveliness.
~John Updike from “A Child’s Calendar”
 
 
chestnutmaple
 
 
Yea, I have looked, and seen November there;
The changeless seal of change it seemed to be,
Fair death of things that, living once, were fair;
Bright sign of loneliness too great for me,
Strange image of the dread eternity,
In whose void patience how can these have part,
These outstretched feverish hands, this restless heart?
~William Morris, “November”
 
 

bakerhighway

 

Even as worn and wrinkly I feel these days,
I know there still is beauty hidden within
as I look into your eyes that remember,
your eyes that saw me young
once so smooth and fresh and soft,
in yielding to fit you before we fall
together, beautifully in bloom.

 

ohl20171

 

sistersfence

Life Making Life

barnstormingblog5 Comments

olh2017

 

slugdandy

 

slugcanoodle

 

dogwood111117

 

In the beginning
is a dream of being.
This is real:
What the earthworm
and slug do in their becoming
what cells and galaxies do
what the atoms in lichen and microbes are–
the glue and the forces
that hold us together–
the armature of bones and stones.
How the mountain and trees and oceans breathe.
What the whale knows.
We don’t know why
only glimpses of how and what
from the source of compassion–
life making life and becoming
as it turns again and again.
~Carol Snyder Halberstadt “What We Are”

 

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pnp7161

 

bakerswirl3

 

Each day I glimpse cells organized into structures programmed to reproduce themselves. The essence of life making life comes from a spark of continuous renewal, from the dying away to the born once again.

The spark may be sheer chemistry between molecules, or an electromagnetic interaction of particles.

It may be a prophecy fulfilled or an old story retold or a dream made real.

I believe the spark is nothing less than Love itself, whether within the DNA of slugs or lichens or that of our precious next generation born in the image of God.

In the beginning, we were begun by this Love. In His compassionate grace, we will begin again and again.

 

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photo by Tomomi Gibson

An Everyday Epiphany

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woods24

 

septembermapleleaves

 

“Gratitude bestows reverence, allowing us to encounter everyday epiphanies,
those transcendent moments of awe that change forever how we experience life and the world.”
~ John Milton

 

frontyardnov141

 

walnutyard

 

Our farm looked like it had a remodel update this past week by the winds and rain, covering the yard with a yellow brown shag carpet of leaves thicker than ever I remember in our two 25 years here.   This transformation is temporary until the leaves start to rot under the burden of endless days of wintry drizzle and freezing weather, but transcendent over plain green sod nevertheless.

I need to remind myself that only 8 months ago, none of these leaves even existed.  They were mere potential in bud form, about to burst and grow in a silent awesome explosion of green and chlorophyll.   After their brief tenure as shade and protection and fuel factory for their tree, last week they rained to the ground in torrents, letting go of the only security they had known.

Now they are compost, returning to the soil to feed the roots of the trees that gave them life to begin with.

Transcendent death.

 

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mapleleaves

Submerged Day After Day

barnstormingblog2 Comments

oakleaf11171

 

morning1110173

 

If God makes the world, populates the world,
infuses the world with every kind of ethical meaning,
then the signature of God is the beauty of the world.
Why even imagine a mystical experience when we’re born into one,
submerged in one, day after day?
~Marilynne Robinson from Image Journal

 

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IMG_1562

 

blueberryleaf

 

I’m reminded,
drowning in a morass of tiny details,
trying to make sense
of the incomprehensible~
life sometimes spread so thin
it’s punched with gaping holes
filled only by God’s breath.
This is Him
staking His claim
by signing His name
on our hearts.
There is beauty in the world
from our insides out,
submerged in
every hole of nothingness,
every connecting thread
every letter He has ever written
reminding us we are His.

 

 

tatteredleaf

 

birch1

timetocomein

All Seasons Sweet

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grapes2

The winter will be short, the summer long,
The autumn amber-hued, sunny and hot,
Tasting of cider and of scuppernong;
All seasons sweet, but autumn best of all.
The autumn frosts will lie upon the grass
Like bloom on grapes of purple-brown and gold.
The misted early mornings will be cold;
The little puddles will be roofed with glass.
The sun, which burns from copper into brass,
Melts these at noon, and makes the boys unfold
Their knitted mufflers; full as they can hold
Fat pockets dribble chestnuts as they pass.
Down to the Puritan marrow of my bones 
There’s something in this richness that I hate. 
I love the look, austere, immaculate, 
Of landscapes drawn in pearly monotones. 
There’s something in my very blood that owns 
Bare hills, cold silver on a sky of slate, 
A thread of water, churned to milky spate 
Streaming through slanted pastures fenced with stones. 
I love those skies, thin blue or snowy gray, 
Those fields sparse-planted, rendering meagre sheaves; 
That spring, briefer than apple-blossom’s breath, 
Summer, so much too beautiful to stay, 
Swift autumn, like a bonfire of leaves, 
And sleepy winter, like the sleep of death.

~Elinor Wylie from “Wild Peaches”

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Amber stretches from sky to ground.
The clouds key-holed in the chill
and below, the leaves suffer their own keyholes
as they slowly melt away.
I’m feeling holey myself,
punched and transparent,
pondering where holiness is found
when life wholly shows its holes.
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octleaf1

A Soft-Dying Day

barnstormingblog2 Comments

octevening2917

 

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sunset101117

 

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness, 
        Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;

Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?
Think not of them, thou hast thy music too, —
While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day, 
        And touch the stubble plains with rosy hue —

~John Keats, lines from “To Autumn”

 

evening1026173

 

The trees are undressing, and fling in many places—
On the gray road, the roof, the window-sill—
Their radiant robes and ribbons and yellow laces;
A leaf each second so is flung at will,
Here, there, another and another, still and still.
~Thomas Hardy from “Last Week in October”

 

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artistpoint104176

 

We think we are mere witness to this,
this transformation happening before our eyes
as unforgiving wind strips leaves from trees
left bare and naked in their bones–

yet we too will be exposed for who we are
under the window dressing we spend so much to create,
too soon nothing is left to cover our flaws
and our bones alone will tell our story of redemption.

 

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All the Airy Words We Summon

barnstormingblog4 Comments
octobertony
lookingnorth2

The world does not need words.
It articulates itself in sunlight, leaves, and shadows.
The stones on the path are no less real
for lying uncatalogued and uncounted.
The fluent leaves speak only 
the dialect of pure being.

The sunlight needs no praise piercing the rainclouds, 
painting the rocks and leaves with light, then dissolving
each lucent droplet back into the clouds that engendered it.
The daylight needs no praise, and so we praise it always–
greater than ourselves and all the airy words we summon.
~Dana Giola from “Words”

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briarcrofthillwest

The words the world needs is the Word itself;
we are
because He breathed breath into us
and said that it was good.

Whatever we have to say about His Creation
pales compared to His
it is good

But we try
over and over again
to use words of wonder and praise
to express our awe and gratitude and amazement
while painted golden by His breath of Light.

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Fall’s Warm Milk of Light

barnstormingblog4 Comments

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portrait of Dan’s mom, Emma Gibson, praying, by granddaughter Sara Lenssen

 

I sit with braided fingers   
and closed eyes
in a span of late sunlight.   
The spokes are closing.
It is fall: warm milk of light,   
though from an aging breast.   
I do not mean to pray.   
The posture for thanks or   
supplication is the same   
as for weariness or relief.   
But I am glad for the luck   
of light. Surely it is godly,   
that it makes all things
begin, and appear, and become   
actual to each other.
Light that’s sucked into   
the eye, warming the brain   
with wires of color.
Light that hatched life
out of the cold egg of earth.
~May Swenson from “October”
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I know all too well that the end of October means the light changes, the colors fade, and the chill sets in.  I grasp and bundle up what scenes I can preserve now, like harvesting hay to be tied up in bales and stored safely until the middle of winter.  Then, at the right time, when I’m most hungry for color and light,  I loosen the strings and let the images tumble out, feeding me like mother’s milk.
And I am filled…
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