There is a gold light in certain old paintings That represents a diffusion of sunlight. It is like happiness, when we are happy. It comes from everywhere and from nowhere at once, this light… One day the sickness shall pass from the earth for good. The orchard will bloom; Our work will be seen as strong and clean and good And all that we suffered through having existed Shall be forgotten as though it had never existed. ~Donald Justice – excerpt from Collected Poems
I live where golden hour light is doled out sparingly – we just might get too used to it – where gray clouds tend to mute and muffle the spirit.
So I search for light as if it is buried like treasure.
When gilded light illuminates and glows, when all is immersed and lifted by its radiance, I forget the gray, as if it never was.
So I wait patiently, ready for another such burst of joy coming from everywhere and nowhere all at once. A moment in time to be preserved, not to be forgotten.
One-Time
Monthly
Yearly
Make a one-time or recurring donation to support daily ad-free Barnstorming posts
In October of the year, he counts potatoes dug from the brown field, counting the seed, counting the cellar’s portion out, and bags the rest on the cart’s floor.
He packs wool sheared in April, honey in combs, linen, leather tanned from deerhide, and vinegar in a barrel hooped by hand at the forge’s fire.
He walks by his ox’s head, ten days to Portsmouth Market, and sells potatoes, and the bag that carried potatoes, flaxseed, birch brooms, maple sugar, goose feathers, yarn.
When the cart is empty he sells the cart. When the cart is sold he sells the ox, harness and yoke, and walks home, his pockets heavy with the year’s coin for salt and taxes,
and at home by fire’s light in November cold stitches new harness for next year’s ox in the barn, and he carved a new yoke and sawed planks for a new cart and split shingles all winter, while his wife made flax into linen all winter, and his daughter embroidered linen all winter, and his son carved Indian brooms from birch all winter, and everybody made candles, and in March they tapped the sugar maple trees and boiled the sap down, and in April they sheared the sheep, spun yarn, and wove and knitted, and in May they planted potatoes, turnips, and cabbages, while apple blossoms bloomed and fell, while bees woke up, starting to make new honey, and geese squawked in the barnyard, dropping feathers as soft as clouds. ~Donald Hall “The Oxcart Man”
Come inside now. Stand beside the warming stove. Watch out through the windows as a cold rain tears down the last leaves.
The larder full of dried herbs, hot peppers, chutneys, jellies, jams, dill pickles, pickled relishes, pickled beets.
The freezer full of frozen greens— chard and spinach, collards, kale— green beans, basil, red sauces, applesauce, and smoked meats.
The woodshed dry and full of wood, winter squashes stashed away. Down cellar: potatoes, carrots, crock of sauerkraut.
Come inside now. Stand beside the warming stove. Listen. Wait. ~David Budbill “Come Inside Now” from Happy Life
Nothing would sleep in that cellar, dank as a ditch, Bulbs broke out of boxes hunting for chinks in the dark, Shoots dangled and drooped, Lolling obscenely from mildewed crates, Hung down long yellow evil necks, like tropical snakes. And what a congress of stinks! Roots ripe as old bait, Pulpy stems, rank, silo-rich, Leaf-mold, manure, lime, piled against slippery planks. Nothing would give up life: Even the dirt kept breathing a small breath. ~Theodore Roetke “Root Cellar”from The Collected Poems
Even in the cold wet chill of November, our garden continues breathing, guarded by the furry fellow on a stalk below until a heavy windstorm topples him over.
When I descend the steps into our root cellar, I find a still life of empty jars, no longer in use for produce to be preserved until spring. I no longer preserve produce through canning, as I used to. Instead we dry and freeze fruits and vegetables for storage. The cellar, though not as full as in years past, remains a place of quiet fecundity with its rich and earthy smells – a reminder of how things were done before the conveniences of today. We still keep apples, potatoes and onions in safe-keeping below ground – some of this farm’s orchard and garden harvest has been stored fresh in the cellar, year after year, for decades.
Until the last century, all of a farm family’s energy and effort was to preserve and store what was necessary to survive another year. Today, in too many places in the world, simple survival remains a family’s necessary and noble goal.
Surrounded by the relative comfort and privilege of a bountiful garden, orchard and woodpile, I never want to forget that.
Come inside. Warm up by the fire. Listen. Wait. Pray for lasting peace.
My artichoke “pup”
One-Time
Monthly
Yearly
Make a one-time or recurring donation to support daily Barnstorming posts
And I have traveled along the contours of leaves that have no name. Here where the air is wet and the light is cool, I feel what others are thinking and do not speak, I know pleasure in the veins of a sugar maple, I am living at the edge of a new leaf. ~Arthur Sze, from “The Shapes of Leaves” from The Redshifting Web: Poems.
…when it has been centuries since you watched the sun set or the rain fall, and the clouds, drifting overhead, pass as flat as anything on a postcard; when, in the midst of these everyday nightmares, you understand that you could wake up, you could turn and go back to the last thing you remember doing with your whole heart: that passionate kiss, the brilliant drop of love rolling along the tongue of a green leaf, then you wake, you stumble from your cave, blinking in the sun, naming every shadow as it slips. ~Joyce Sutphen from “From Out the Cave”
Just like an autumn leaf, the skin on the back of my hand has a branching network of veins, like so many tributaries in a river delta. This connection between human circulation and a chlorophyll-driven photosynthesis factory suggests a mysteriously organized origin. We, formed as living breathing creatures, journey to our ultimate destination back to dust.
Together we emerge from the shadows, blinking at the bright sun, thriving under its light.
Maybe “turning over a new leaf” is for people like me who seem to be overly attracted to old leaves. For the moment, I travel along each falling leaf’s edge, in love with their colors and flaws and gradual fading transparency.
Our Creator God falls in love with each one of us for all the same reasons. He created us to live and breathe and flash brilliant in our journey, our veins flowing with gratitude for His Word and World.
One-Time
Monthly
Yearly
Make a one-time or recurring donation to support daily Barnstorming posts
You are not surprised at the force of the storm— you have seen it growing. The trees flee. Now you must go out into your heart as onto a vast plain. Now the immense loneliness begins.
The days go numb, the wind sucks the world from your senses like withered leaves.
Through the empty branches the sky remains. It is what you have. Be earth now, and evensong. Be the ground lying under that sky. Be modest now, like a thing ripened until it is real, so that he who began it all can feel you when he reaches for you. ~Rainer Maria Rilke from “Onto a Vast Plain”
I feel autumn rain Trying to explain something I do not want to know. ~Richard Wright “Haiku”
I know what this heavy autumn rainfall is trying to tell me –
Be buffed smooth by the winds, and lose your sharp edges Be restored after too many hot weeks of drought and dust Be humbled walking through mud and slosh and slick soppiness Be grateful for this newly opened landscape as trees shed leaves Be aware that sadness has its place this time of year, seeking solace Be balm to ones who are lonely and hunger for encouragement Be ready to remain still, listen, and content with what comes each day.
One-Time
Monthly
Yearly
Make a one-time or recurring donation to support daily Barnstorming posts
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.
A spider’s web has caught one while downcoming, That stays there dangling when the rest pass on; Like a suspended criminal hangs he, mumming In golden garb, while one yet green, high yon, Trembles, as fearing such a fate for himself anon. ~Thomas Hardy from “Last Week in October”
Some feel such loneliness, as if being the only one to fall until landing gently cushioned among so many others, still and still.
A few end up suspended, here and there, twisting and turning in a chill wind, helplessly awaiting what is to come.
So I dangle in suspense, held by sheer faith to a slender thread, hoping for rescue while others pass me by ~~ another and another, still and still until that apprehensive moment when I too am let go, though no longer lonely.
One-Time
Monthly
Yearly
Make a one-time or recurring donation to support daily Barnstorming posts
Now in the blessed days of more and less when the news about time is that each day there is less of it I know none of that as I walk out through the early garden only the day and I are here with no before or after and the dew looks up without a number or a present age ~W.S. Merwin “Dew Light” from The Moon Before Morning
A walk around our farm in October is more or less, before or after, now and then, a timelessness of shifting seasons and fading days.
A prayer becomes like dew from above, me looking up to the God who was, is and ever will be, who already knows what I am about to say. He knows I don’t tend to say anything new.
He blesses me with the light of His dew.
I write every day to explain myself to people I will never meet. Perhaps, every day, I am trying to explain myself to God.
God is, (if I stop to look and listen), yesterday, today, tomorrow – more or less, before or after, now and then, but most especially forever and ever.
Amen.
One-Time
Monthly
Yearly
Make a one-time or recurring donation to support daily Barnstorming posts
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.
One-Time
Monthly
Yearly
Make a one-time or recurring donation to support daily Barnstorming posts
October is nature’s funeral month. Nature glories in death more than in life. The month of departure is more beautiful than the month of coming – October than May.
I don’t know… I myself feel pretty drab these days, gray and fading, with ripples and wrinkles, more fluff than firm. I’m reminded to hang on to an October state of mind: go for raucous color rather than somber funereal attire, so when it is time to take my leave, and I want to take my time – I go brightly, in joyous celebration of what has been~~ and knowing, without any doubt, the colors are stunning where I’m heading when I wander down the road a piece.
One-Time
Monthly
Yearly
Make a one-time or recurring donation to support daily Barnstorming posts
Now constantly there is the sound, quieter than rain, of the leaves falling.
Under their loosening bright gold, the sycamore limbs bleach whiter.
Now the only flowers are beeweed and aster, spray of their white and lavender over the brown leaves.
The calling of a crow sounds Loud — landmark — now that the life of summer falls silent, and the nights grow. ~Wendell Berry “October 10” from New Collected Poems.
If I were a color, I would be green, turning to gold, turning to bronze, turning to dust. If I were a sound, I would patter like raindrops and children’s feet. If I were a smell, I would be dry earth soaking up a shower. If I were a touch, I would be a leaf landing softly. If I were a taste, I would be a bit sweet and a bit sour. If I were a season, I would be the wistful goodbye hug of autumn. But I am none of these, being enough for now. Singing in the leaves, I will come rejoicing, Singing in the leaves.
One-Time
Monthly
Yearly
Make a one-time or recurring donation to support daily Barnstorming posts
Had I not been awake I would have missed it, A wind that rose and whirled until the roof Pattered with quick leaves off the sycamore
And got me up, the whole of me a-patter, Alive and ticking like an electric fence: Had I not been awake I would have missed it
It came and went too unexpectedly And almost it seemed dangerously, Hurtling like an animal at the house,
A courier blast that there and then Lapsed ordinary. But not ever Afterwards. And not now. ~Seamus Heaney “Had I Not Been Awake”
October is the month of the sudden warm wind-blow, usually arriving from the south, intent on scattering leaves and slamming doors on its way past to head north to Canada. Our wind chimes outside clang a cacophony rather than the usual gentle harmonic tones. The window shades become percussion instruments over our still-open windows. Anything not fastened down goes airborne.
The air blows in a rush from somewhere else, bringing new smells and sensations, surging with an electric energy even as it tries to pull power lines down to render us powerless.
Nothing feels ordinary in a windstorm; there is no easy sleep.
And just as suddenly, the autumn storm passes and is gone. The trees have been stripped, embarrassed at their sudden nakedness. Branches litter the yard and driveway like so many toothpicks. My illusion of comfort and control has been undone by such a show of force and power.
I face my own frailty in the wake of life’s storms. Had I not been awake, I might have missed that altogether.
One-Time
Monthly
Yearly
Make a one-time or recurring donation to support daily Barnstorming posts
Barnstorming 