There are days we live as if death were nowhere in the background; from joy to joy to joy, from wing to wing, from blossom to blossom to impossible blossom, to sweet impossible blossom. ~Li-Young Lee from “From Blossoms”
August of another summer, and once again I am drinking the sun… All my life I have been able to feel happiness, except whatever was not happiness, which I also remember. Each of us wears a shadow. But just now it is summer again…
Soon now, I’ll turn and start for home. And who knows, maybe I’ll be singing. ~Mary Oliver from “The Pond” from Felicity
…what I want in my life is to be willing to be dazzled- to cast aside the weight of facts
and maybe even to float a little above this difficult world. I want to believe I am looking
into the white fire of a great mystery. I want to believe that the imperfections are nothing- that the light is everything-that it is more than the sum of each flawed blossom rising and fading. And I do. ~Mary Oliver from “The Ponds” from House of Light
My friend Jean is a skilled gardener who has grown and hybridized dahlias for decades. What I see growing in the soil is her artist’s palette composed of petals, leaves and roots.
She has passionately cared for these plants; they reflect that love in every spiral and swirl, hue and gradient of color, showing stark symmetry and delightful variegation.
From homely and knobby look-alike tubers grow these luxurious beauties of infinite variety. I stand captivated before each one, realizing that same Creator makes sure I too impossibly bloom from mere dust.
Then He sets me to work in His garden, singing.
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He’s not so absorbed in the life around him That he never looks up on clear nights To admire the starry face of the sky. But he’s awed even more by the earth he lives on, By how much, for instance, its fertility Depends on the unseen toil of earthworms. Who would believe that over decades Every inch of the field behind his house Passes through their bodies again and again As they feed on the dirt they tunnel through? So much tireless turning over of loam, So much natural harrowing, shredding, and leveling. Yes, their work has undermined the stone wall That marks the edge of his garden. But that’s a small price For soil that nurtures the berries and grains He enjoys at breakfast. Why turn from the table To write a lament on the power of time To undermine human effort when he can describe How the work of worms helps sustain us? Not to bother with them because they aren’t aware Of his existence—how small-minded That would seem to him in a species that prides itself On understanding its place in the scheme of things, As small-minded as thinking less of the stars Because they aren’t twinkling for his benefit. But the stars aren’t likely to go unnoticed By a species quick to admire what’s distant, Serene, and glittering, as opposed to what’s near, Busy, and inconspicuous, Working an inch beneath the grass. ~Carl Dennis “Near Darwin”
Aren’t you glad at least that the earthworms Under the grass are ignorant, as they eat the earth, Of the good they confer on us, that their silence Isn’t a silent reproof for our bad manners, Our never casting earthward a crumb of thanks For their keeping the soil from packing so tight That no root, however determined, could pierce it?
Imagine if they suspected how much we owe them, How the weight of our debt would crush us Even if they enjoyed keeping the grass alive, The garden flowers and vegetables, the clover, And wanted nothing that we could give them, Not even the merest nod of acknowledgment.
A debt to angels would be easy in comparison, Bright, weightless creatures of cloud, who serve An even brighter and lighter master. Lucky for us they don’t know what they’re doing, These puny anonymous creatures of dark and damp Who eat simply to live, with no more sense of mission Than nature feels in providing for our survival. …the tunneling earthworms, tireless, silent, As they persist, oblivious, in their service. ~Carl Dennis from “Worms”
We’ve been composting horse manure for several decades behind the barn, and we dig in to the tall pile to spread on our garden plots. As Dan pushes the tractor’s front loader into the pile, steam rises from its compost innards. As the rich soil is scooped, thousands of newly exposed red wiggler worms immediately dive for cover. Within seconds, thousands of naked little creatures have, well, …wormed their way back into the security of warm dirt, being rudely interrupted from their routine. I can’t say I blame them.
Hundreds of thousands of wigglers end up being forced in the spring to adapt to new quarters, leaving the security of the manure mountain behind. As we smooth the topping of compost over the garden plot, the worms–gracious creatures that they are–tolerate being rolled and raked and lifted and turned over, waving their little bodies expectantly in the cool air before slipping back down into the dark. There they begin their work of digesting, aerating and renewing the soil of the garden, reproducing in their unique hermaphroditic way, leaving voluminous castings behind to further feed future seedlings to be planted.
Worms are unjustly denigrated by humans primarily because we don’t like to be surprised by them. We don’t like to see one in our food, especially only part of one, and are particularly distressed to see them after we’ve digested our food. Once we get past that bit of squeamishness, we can greatly appreciate their role as the ultimate recyclers, leaving the earth under our feet a lot better off once they are finished with their work.
We humans actually suffer by comparison: to be called “a worm” is really not as bad as it sounds at first. It is possible the worm may be offended by the association.
I hope to prove a worthy innkeeper for these new tenants. May they live long and prosper only an inch beneath the grass, so much more accessible than the infinite stars in the sky. May each worm forgive the disruption perpetrated by our rake and shovel. May I smile appreciatively the next time someone calls me a mere worm.
a cross section of 30 months of composted manure
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Under a sky the color of pea soup she is looking at her work growing away there actively, thickly like grapevines or pole beans as things grow in the real world, slowly enough. If you tend them properly, if you mulch, if you water, if you provide birds that eat insects a home and winter food, if the sun shines and you pick off caterpillars, if the praying mantis comes and the ladybugs and the bees, then the plants flourish, but at their own internal clock.
Connections are made slowly, sometimes they grow underground. You cannot tell always by looking what is happening. More than half the tree is spread out in the soil under your feet. Penetrate quietly as the earthworm that blows no trumpet. Fight persistently as the creeper that brings down the tree. Spread like the squash plant that overruns the garden. Gnaw in the dark and use the sun to make sugar.
Weave real connections, create real nodes, build real houses. Live a life you can endure: Make love that is loving. Keep tangling and interweaving and taking more in, a thicket and bramble wilderness to the outside but to us interconnected with rabbit runs and burrows and lairs.
Live as if you liked yourself, and it may happen: reach out, keep reaching out, keep bringing in. This is how we are going to live for a long time: not always, for every gardener knows that after the digging, after the planting, after the long season of tending and growth, the harvest comes. ~Marge Piercy “The Seven of Pentacles”
Our garden teaches us all kinds of life lessons, thanks to my husband’s hours of hard work preparing the soil, planting carefully and nurturing the emerging seedlings.
No garden tends itself – the growing plants reach out for connection to one another, for stability and companionship. The gardener nurtures, defends and harvests with an eye to preparing for the next growing season.
We who have been planted here need one another, interwoven and linked, both visibly and invisibly. I am woven around you and you around me; together we grow and thrive when tended, and as intended.
But more than anything else, we need our Gardener…
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“Hold on,” she said, “I’ll just run out and get him. The weather here’s so good, he took the chance To do a bit of weeding.”
So I saw him Down on his hands and knees beside the leek rig, Touching, inspecting, separating one Stalk from the other, gently pulling up Everything not tapered, frail and leafless, Pleased to feel each little weed-root break, But rueful also . . .
Then found myself listening to The amplified grave ticking of hall clocks Where the phone lay unattended in a calm Of mirror glass and sunstruck pendulums . . .
And found myself then thinking: if it were nowadays, This is how Death would summon Everyman.
My father was a complex man. I understand better now where my own complicated nature comes from.
As inscrutable as he could be, there were things I absolutely understood about him:
he was a man of action – he never just sat, never took a nap, never wasted a day of his life without accomplishing something tangible.
he was a man of the soil – he plowed and harrowed and sowed and fertilized and weeded and cut brush and harvested
he was a man of inventiveness – he figured out a better way, he transformed tools and buildings, he started from scratch and built the impossible
he didn’t explain himself – and never felt the need to.
Time keeps ticking on without him here, now 29 years since he took his last breath as the clock pendulum swung back and forth in his bedroom. He was taken too young for all the projects he still had in mind.
He handed off a few to me. Some I have done. Some still wait, I’m not sure why.
My regret is not understanding how much he needed to hear how loved he was. He seemed fine without it being said.
But he wasn’t fine. And neither was I.
I wish I had said it when I had the chance.
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At once whatever happened starts receding. —Philip Larkin
Last night I walked the woods lit by the final moon of the month.
Days don’t count here beneath the centuries-old pines
where my grandmother took her solace on hard farm days, passing up
the washboard or jam-making for the eternal whooshing
of the forest as much serenity as yearning. ~Dave Malone “Walk in the Woods” from Tornado Drill
Over my seventy years, I’ve had the opportunity to walk through woods in different parts of the world – from my childhood home near Puget Sound, to the Bay Area in California, from central Africa above Lake Tanganyika to the forests of Northern Ireland and the coastline of Vancouver Island.
Here on the farm, we have some dense woods that our grandson has designated “the haunted forest” because of its many downed trees from windstorms. He is convinced BigFoot lives somewhere in the dense underbrush, and he may well be right.
During a walk in the woods, no matter where it may be, I find solace in a world where there is teeming life thriving under the ground, at eye level, and overhead. I feel a palpable vibrance with each step I take, while experiencing sounds and smells I find nowhere else.
So, I too leave behind the work of the day – the laundry, the cleaning and cooking – if only for an hour or so. And once again, I sync my own heartbeat to the pulse of the mysterious life I find, ongoing and eternal, in the woods.
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True gardeners cannot bear a glove Between the sure touch and the tender root, Must let their hands grow knotted as they move With a rough sensitivity about Under the earth, between the rock and shoot, Never to bruise or wound the hidden fruit. And so I watched my mother’s hands grow scarred, She who could heal the wounded plant or friend With the same vulnerable yet rigorous love; I minded once to see her beauty gnarled, But now her truth is given me to live, As I learn for myself we must be hard To move among the tender with an open hand, And to stay sensitive up to the end Pay with some toughness for a gentle world. ~May Sarton “An Observation”
I’m reminded every spring, as my husband’s hands prepare the soil in the garden for that season’s planting, how challenging is the job of the gardener. His hands must fight the chaos of weeds and rocks to prepare a gentle bed for each seed.
A seed is a plain, unadorned and ordinary thing, a little boring even, practically forgotten once it is placed in the ground. Yet the ordinariness is only the outer dress; the extraordinary is contained inside, and within days a tender shoot braves all to come to the surface, bowed and humble. It establishes a tenacious root that ensures survival, grabbing hold in even the most inhospitable ground.
So it is with Jesus whose ordinary origins belied his holiness and majesty. Both hardy root and tender shoot, he reaches up to the heavens while his feet tread the soil, both at once. His toughness paid for our chance at a more gentle world.
And thanks to Him, we are fed.
For he grew up before him like a young plant, and like a root out of dry ground; Isaiah 53:2a
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I have seen the sun break through to illuminate a small field for a while, and gone my way and forgotten it. But that was the pearl of great price, the one field that had treasure in it. I realize now that I must give all that I have to possess it. Life is not hurrying on to a receding future, nor hankering after an imagined past. It is the turning aside like Moses to the miracle of the lit bush, to a brightness that seemed as transitory as your youth once, but is the eternity that awaits you. ~R.S. Thomas “A Bright Field”
The secret of seeing is, then the pearl of great price. If I thought he could teach me to find it and keep it forever I would stagger barefoot across a hundred deserts after any lunatic at all. But although the pearl may be found, it may not be sought.
The literature of illumination reveals this above all: although it comes to those who wait for it, it is always, even to the most practiced and adept, a gift and a total surprise.
I return from one walk knowing where the killdeer nests in the field by the creek and the hour the laurel blooms. I return from the same walk a day later scarcely knowing my own name.
Litanies hum in my ears; my tongue flaps in my mouth. Ailinon, alleluia! ~Annie Dillard from Pilgrim at Tinker Creek
Dear God, I cannot love Thee the way I want to. You are the slim crescent of a moon that I see and my self is the earth’s shadow that keeps me from seeing all the moon. The crescent is very beautiful and perhaps that is all one like I am should or could see; but what I am afraid of, dear God, is that my self shadow will grow so large that it blocks the whole moon, and that I will judge myself by the shadow that is nothing.
I do not know You God because I am in the way. Please help me to push myself aside. ~Flannery O’Connor from A Prayer Journal
Earth’s crammed with heaven, And every common bush afire with God… ~Elizabeth Barrett Browning
I am learning to step aside so my own shadow stops obscuring God’s gift of illumination. I can be so blinded by discouragement, busyness and distraction that I lose sight of God Himself.
I stand in the way and need a push to let the Light shine forth.
Surprise me, dear Lord. Cram this common bush with heaven.
Though I regularly lament in the shadows, help me lift my voice in praise and gratitude for your gift: the pearl of great price you generously hold for me to find each day.
The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field. When a man found it, he hid it again, and then in his joy went and sold all he had and bought that field. Matthew 13: 44
This Lenten season I reflect on the words of the 19th century southern spiritual hymn “What Wondrous Love is This”
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I saw that a yellow crocus bud had pierced a dead oak leaf, then opened wide. How strong its appetite for the luxury of the sun! ~Jane Kenyon from Otherwise: New and Selected Poems
Beyond my window in the night Is but a drab inglorious street, Yet there the frost and clean starlight As over Warwick woods are sweet.
Under the grey drift of the town The crocus works among the mould As eagerly as those that crown The Warwick spring in flame and gold.
And when the tramway down the hill Across the cobbles moans and rings, There is about my window-sill The tumult of a thousand wings. ~John Drinkwater “A Town Window”
This is why I believe that God really has dived down into the bottom of creation, and has come up bringing the whole redeemed nature on His shoulders. The miracles that have already happened are, of course, as Scripture so often says, the first fruits of that cosmic summer which is presently coming on.
Christ has risen, and so we shall rise.
…To be sure, it feels wintry enough still: but often in the very early spring it feels like that. Two thousand years are only a day or two by this scale. A man really ought to say, ‘The Resurrection happened two thousand years ago’ in the same spirit in which he says ‘I saw a crocus yesterday.’
Because we know what is coming behind the crocus.
The spring comes slowly down the way, but the great thing is that the corner has been turned. There is, of course, this difference that in the natural spring the crocus cannot choose whether it will respond or not.
We can.
We have the power either of withstanding the spring, and sinking back into the cosmic winter, or of going on…to which He is calling us.
It remains with us whether to follow or not, to die in this winter, or to go on into that spring and that summer. ~C. S. Lewis from “God in the Dock”
Our appetite is strong for light and warmth, leaving winter behind. Our desire is to defeat death, piercing through the decay and flourishing among the living, opening wide our faces to the luxury of luminous grace freely given.
We have turned the corner and have the power to choose Light. We need only follow the pathway out of darkness. We need only follow the Son as he leads the way.
The desert and the parched land will be glad; the wilderness will rejoice and blossom. Like the crocus, it will burst into bloom; it will rejoice greatly and shout for joy. Isaiah 35: 1-2
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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”
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I look for the spade I used when I was young, when my grandfather said dig and I dug holes the depth I’d been taught so the posts would stand, hold the miles of barbed and hog wire dividing our ground… Dig, he would say, and all morning, afternoon, until it rained, until dark, until I couldn’t lift the spade and grub and he said enough, I dug through dry brown until it turned yellow clay or black earth caked to the tip of the steel. He taught me to measure strength by depth, narrow the hole around the oiled post, and sturdy the line he’d laid before I was old enough to blister from work, acquire the knowledge of straight, of strength, cool soil, rusted staples and splintered wood, the knowledge of bending spikes new, splicing wire, swinging a hammer down hard, the ache from hours of digging, calloused hands and sunburn. He trained me to rake, tamp, stomp, pack dirt and clay, the weight of the earth around the post, its strength into the line. Now the hammers, pliers and cutters are gone. No rolls of wire hang from the beams. No boxes of staples and spikes jam the shelves. The tamping stick is broken. Someone has wrapped duct tape around the spade handle; the steel has rusted brown and rough; a crack climbs from the tip to the mud-caked neck. He would say it is useless, that things are not like they were… ~Curtis Bauer from “A Fence Line Running Through It”
The old farmers in our county are dying off, the ones who remember when horse and human muscle provided the power instead of diesel engines. They have climbed down off their tractors and into their beds for a good night’s sleep.
Their machine sheds are cleared in an auction, their animals trucked away for butcher, their fence lines leaning yet the corner posts, set solid and sure in the hard ground, keep standing when the old farmer no longer does.
These old farmers knew hard work. knew there were no days off, no shirking duty, knew if anyone was going to do what needed doing it was them, no one else. Things are not like they were yet the strong posts remain, ready to hold up another fence line, showing us few remaining farmers what hard work yields.
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