My father swerves the team to miss the quail’s nest hidden in the furrow she rises up beating her wings her cries fill all the world of sky and cloud echoing her call…
and so he passes the caring farmer with his crooked furrow saluting life the warm round eggs hidden in the spring grass the quail rising and falling pulled by invisible heartstrings. ~Dorothy Hewitt “Quail’s Nest”
photo by Kate Steensma
photo by Joel DeWaardphoto by Joel DeWaard
I remember my father driving a wooden post in the ground where a killdeer nest held 6 speckled eggs; the mother would run off crying plaintively, flapping her “broken” wing to lure him away from her precious brood.
He drove the plow around the nest, marking their spot for the season, respecting their presence, preserving their future, without anyone saying he should or he must – only his heart had told him it was the right thing to do.
photo by Joel DeWaardphoto by Kate Steensma
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Sunday mornings I would reach high into his dark closet while standing on a chair and tiptoeing reach higher, touching, sometimes fumbling the soft crowns and imagine I was in a forest, wind hymning through pines, where the musky scent of rain clinging to damp earth was his scent I loved, lingering on bands, leather, and on the inner silk crowns where I would smell his hair and almost think I was being held, or climbing a tree, touching the yellow fruit, leaves whose scent was that of a clove in the godsome air, as now, thinking of his fabulous sleep, I stand on this canyon floor and watch light slowly close on water I’m not sure is there. ~Mark Irwin “My Father’s Hats”
Henry Polis 1968
My father was always more comfortable working outdoors rather than at a desk. He had a nice felt hat for going to church along with the requisite suit and tie, but at home he wore a work cap with a tattered bill and a farm shop logo on the front. It hung on a hook in our breezeway, always sweat-stained from his laboring in full sun on projects on our small farm. I think he could wring it out at the end of the day.
My dad was not one for wearing aftershave or cologne, even to his office job. He had to scrub hard on Sunday mornings as his fingernails contained soil from the garden and grease from the car engines. He smelled like the woods where he slashed and piled brush, like the smoke from the burn piles he lit, like the cement he was always mixing to create his latest walkway, foundation, or support structure. And he always smelled of tobacco – his chosen vice – but never of alcohol which ruined not only his own father’s life and those around him.
I don’t think my father lost his faith even when he suffered at the end, dying of a second cancer after the first was defeated. He wasn’t one to speak of God or salvation so I simply assumed, just as I did during those decades of Sunday morning hat and suits, worshiping in church.
His light shone, even during the hard times when I wasn’t sure it was still there.
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Oh, to be the washed linens and sheets the towels and blouses and trousers, all the underpinnings of dailiness—all sailing and flapping on a sturdy line, releasing their music of fabric to the air— to be so wind-rinsed and cleansed, so sun-seeped down to the deepest thread. ~Andrea Potos “Small Ode to Laundry on the Line”from Her Joy Becomes
All day the blanket snapped and swelled on the line, roused by a hot spring wind…. From there it witnessed the first sparrow, early flies lifting their sticky feet, and a green haze on the south-sloping hills. Clouds rose over the mountain….At dusk I took the blanket in, and we slept, restless, under its fragrant weight. ~Jane Kenyon “Wash”
I may walk the streets of this century and make my living in an office but my blood is old farming blood and my true self is underground like a potato.
I have taken root in my grandfather’s fields: I am hanging my laundry beneath his trees. ~Faith Shearin from “Fields”
Here we stand breathless And pressed in hard times Hearts hung like laundry On backyard clothes lines Impossible just takes A little more time ~Carrie Newcomer “You Can Do This Hard Thing”
For me, clean laundry freshly dried on the clothesline is a daily sacrament. True, the towels and sheets are rougher when the wind has snapped them into shape rather than a rolling dryer drum with fabric softener sheets. The scent of the outdoors more than makes up for the sandpaper feel. I love burying my face in the pile as I bring it inside to fold and put away.
Smoothing, folding, stacking, creating order out of a quotidian mess – laundry will be undone and redone in merely a week, yet is such a comforting routine.
Even when we ourselves are in disarray, when we are soiled and smelly, when we feel discarded into the dirty clothes hamper, we can be restored. Soapy water and fresh air readies us to be folded and smoothed and stowed away until we are needed.
We find our way back to purpose and meaning. We are loved so much that grime no longer defines us because we always (always) can be made clean.
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There were a few dozen who occupied the field across the road from where we lived, stepping all day from tuft to tuft, their big heads down in the soft grass, though I would sometimes pass a window and look out to see the field suddenly empty as if they had taken wing, flown off to another country.
Then later, I would open the blue front door, and again the field would be full of their munching or they would be lying down on the black-and-white maps of their sides, facing in all directions, waiting for rain. How mysterious, how patient and dumbfounded they appear in the long quiet of the afternoon.
But every once in a while, one of them would let out a sound so phenomenal that I would put down the paper or the knife I was cutting an apple with and walk across the road to the stone wall to see which one of them was being torched or pierced through the side with a long spear.
Yes, it sounded like pain until I could see the noisy one, anchored there on all fours, her neck outstretched, her bellowing head laboring upward as she gave voice to the rising, full-bodied cry that began in the darkness of her belly and echoed up through her bowed ribs into her gaping mouth.
Then I knew that she was only announcing the large, unadulterated cowness of herself, pouring out the ancient apologia of her kind to all the green fields and the gray clouds, to the limestone hills and the inlet of the blue bay, while she regarded my head and shoulders above the wall with one wild, shocking eye. ~Billy Collins “Afternoon with Irish Cows”
Most of my life I have lived surrounded by cows. I have great appreciation for their pastoral presence, and know well their nosiness and their noisiness.
There isn’t anything else that sounds like a cow in heat. Nothing. Especially in the middle of the night.
There is the fascination of following a meandering cow path through a field –where there is no such thing as a straight line.
And there isn’t anything quite as riveting to a cow than a human approaching the gate.
During our farm stays in Ireland and Scotland a few years back, we made a point to get to know the local bovines, just for comparison’s sake. At home we raised Scottish Highland cattle, so we felt we could speak their language, even if they were Belted Galloways rather than Highlanders. Sure enough, we were just as riveting to them as they were to us.
We have talked about getting a couple of furry cows again for the farm. It’s been awhile since we hosted some here. I’m nostalgic for their reassuring cud chewing, their soft flap of ear, their round transparent eyes, but most of all watching the acrobatics of a tongue that wraps itself around a clump of grass while grazing and can reach up and clean out a moist nose.
A wondrous creature — the bovine – true magnificence and mystery in their cowishness.
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Praise be to the not-nearly-a-girl anymore clerking at our local grocery outlet since junior high. Single mom, moved up after a decade of customer service to manage four well-ordered aisles of hairsprays, lipsticks, and youthful glow in glittering squeeze tubes. Familiar red-headed, brown-eyed, gap-toothed smile. Willing to put aside her boxes of chores to chat with each of us she names by heart.
I forget if she’s Mary or Alice or Jane. Fine, I answer after she asks, How’s your day? And driving my sacks of next week’s meals home, I wonder why she rises from her labors to greet me, why she straightens her smock where it’s pulled up a bit and rides her hips. Tucks in place a loose wisp of curl. When I walk by, what does she want to know, when she asks, How’s your day? I wonder why so seldom I’ve asked it back. ~Lowell Jaeger “Praise Be” from Or Maybe I Drift Off Alone.
Did you find everything you were looking for?Julie, the magenta-haired
checkout girl, asks, and no, I think, I didn’t find inner peace, or answers to
several questions I’ve been mulling, like are we headed for nuclear war and
does the rest of the world think America has gone bonkers and also, by the way,
I could not find the tofu bacon, and the chocolate sorbet shelf was empty
(I did find canned pumpkin in aisle four) but I am silent and smile at Julie who
seems to know what I’m thinking anyway so I hold back and muse on the view
of the bay this morning when we walked the dog and the parsnip soup we’ll
make for dinner and realize that total fulfillment probably jades the senses and
the bagger asks if I’d like help today carrying my groceries out to the car. ~Thomas R. Moore, “Finding Everything” fromRed Stone Fragments
He was a new old man behind the counter, skinny, brown and eager. He greeted me like a long-lost daughter, as if we both came from the same world, someplace warmer and more gracious…
…his face lit up as if I were his prodigal daughter returning, coming back to the freezer bins in front of the register which were still and always filled with the same old Cable Car ice cream sandwiches and cheap frozen greens. Back to the knobs of beef and packages of hotdogs, these familiar shelves strung with potato chips and corn chips…
I lumbered to the case and bought my precious bottled water and he returned my change, beaming as if I were the bright new buds on the just-bursting-open cherry trees, as if I were everything beautiful struggling to grow, and he was blessing me as he handed me my dime over the counter and the plastic tub of red licorice whips. This old man who didn’t speak English beamed out love to me in the iron week after my mother’s death so that when I emerged from his store my whole cock-eyed life – what a beautiful failure ! – glowed gold like a sunset after rain. ~Alison Luterman from “At the Corner Store”
This week as I shopped in one of our local grocery stores, I witnessed a particularly poignant scene. As I waited in the check out line, the older man ahead of me was greeted by the young cashier with the standard “Did you find everything you were looking for?” He responded with: “I looked for world peace on your shelves, but it must have been sold out…”
She stopped scanning and looked directly at him for the first time, trying to discern if she misunderstood him or if he was mocking her or what. “Did you try Aisle 4?” she replied and they both laughed. They continued in light-hearted conversation as she continued scanning and once he had paid for his order and packed up his cart, he looked at her again.
“Thank for so much for coming to work today – I am so grateful for what you do.” He wheeled away his groceries and she stood, stunned, watching him go.
As I came up next, I looked at her watering eyes as she tried to compose herself and I said to her: “I’ll bet you don’t hear that often enough, do you?” She pulled herself together and shook her head, trying to make sense of the gift of words he had bestowed on her.
“No – like never,” she said as she scanned my groceries. “How could he possibly have known that I almost didn’t come to work today because it has been so stressful to be here? People are usually polite, but lately more and more have been so demanding. No one seems to care about how others are feeling any more.”
She brushed away a tear and I paid for my groceries, and told her:
“I hope the rest of your work day is as great as that last customer. You’ve given me everything I was looking for today…”
And I emerged from the store feeling blessed, like I had scored a pot of gold like a sunset after rain.
Today a while it rained I washed the jars And then I lit a flame set the water to start And at the end of the day lined up to cool and seal Twelve pints of spiced peach jam twenty jars of dill beans canned From an old recipe that my mother gave to me Because it’s good to put a little bit by For when the late snows fly All that love so neatly kept By the work of our hands
Lay hands on boards and bricks and loud machines With shovels and rakes and buckets of soup they clean And I believe that we should bless evеry shirt ironed and pressed Salutе the crews out on the roads Those who stock shelves and carry loads Whisper thanks to the brooms and saws the dirty boots and coveralls And bow my head to the waitress and nurse Tip my hat to the farmer and clerk All those saints with skillets and pans And the work of their hands Work of their hands
Laid out on the counter pull up out of hot water The work of our hands so faithful and true I make something barely there music is a little more than air So now every year I’ll put by tomatoes and pears Boil the lids and wipe the lip with a calloused fingertip And I swear by the winter ground We’ll open one and pass the thing around Let the light catch the jar amber gold as a falling star It’s humble and physical it’s only love made visible Yeah now I understand it’s the work of our hands
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I sit in the shadow of apple-boughs, In the fragrant orchard close, And around me floats the scented air, With its wave-like tidal flows. I close my eyes in a dreamy bliss, And call no king my peer; For is not this the rare, sweet time, The blossoming time of the year?
I can see, through the rifts of the apple-boughs, The delicate blue of the sky, And the changing clouds with their marvellous tints That drift so lazily by. And strange, sweet thoughts sing through my brain, And Heaven, it seemeth near; Oh, is it not a rare, sweet time, The blossoming time of the year? ~Horatio Alger from “Apple Blossoms”
The rain eases long enough to allow blades of grass to stand back up expectant, refreshed yet unsuspecting, primed for the mower’s cutting swath.
Clusters of pink tinged blossoms sway in response to my mower’s pass, apple buds bulge on ancient branches in promise of fruit stroked by the honeybees’ tickling legs.
Bowing low beneath the swollen blooms, yet caught by snagging branches that shower from hidden raindrop reservoirs held inside blushing petal cups, my face anointed in perfumed apple tears.
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Whisper to the workers and they’ll bring the news to the queen. When a beekeeper dies someone is assigned to tell her bees that she’s gone, they shouldn’t expect the scent of her skin, the sound of her voice. They need to know who will look in on them. Sometimes I do tell my ladies about what will affect them: it will be getting hotter in the next few years. I’ll give them water and sugar to replace their losses, but there will be new parasites coming north. I don’t know what I’ll do. They don’t care, none of it matters in a 3-week lifespan in a world of nectar and pollen, dearth and flow. So mostly I keep it simple, tell them everything will be ok, you’re strong and good; the cell walls are solid, the queen will keep laying, the magnet of the poles will bring you home. ~Sara Eddy, from Tell the Bees
After the last ee had uzzed its last uzz,
the irds and the utterflies did what they could.
ut soon the fields lay are, few flowers were left,
nature was roken, and the planet ereft. ~Brian Bilston “The Last Bee”
This would be a bereft world indeed without bees…
I am awed and inspired by apiarists. Our niece Andrea has been bee-keeping for over a decade, keeping hives at home in nearby Skagit Valley as well as moving them during growing season to pollinate the blooms at Floret Flower Farm and other beautiful places.
A beekeeper must be a loving and patient person; the bees know who loves them, and who will always be there to care for them.
An old Celtic tradition necessitates sharing any news from the household with the farm’s bee hives, whether cheery like a new birth or a wedding celebration or sad like a family death. This ensures the hives’ well-being and continued connection to home and community – the bees are kept in the loop, so to speak, so they stay at home, not swarm and move on to a more hospitable place.
So, sweet bees – I hope your short little life remains safe and predictable so you and your descendants can continue to pollinate the world.
Everything will be okay.
Otherwise, no more bees would ultimately mean – no more anything.
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This fevers me, this sun on green, On grass glowing, this young spring. The secret hallowing is come, Regenerate sudden incarnation, Mystery made visible In growth, yet subtly veiled in all, Ununderstandable in grass, In flowers, and in the human heart, This lyric mortal loveliness, The earth breathing, and the sun… ~Richard Eberhart from “This Fevers Me”
I go my way, and my left foot says ‘Glory,’ and my right foot says ‘Amen’: in and out of Shadow Creek, upstream and down, exultant, in a daze, dancing, to the twin silver trumpets of praise. ~Annie Dillard from Pilgrim at Tinker Creek
Every day should be a day of dancing and loveliness and breathing deeply, of celebrating the fact we woke afresh, a new start of a secret hallowing.
If I’m honest, I don’t always feel like dancing, my feet each going their own way with my head barely attached to my neck.
As I stumble about in my morning daze, readying myself for the onslaught to come, I step out the back door, look at the mountain and mumble “Glory” and then blink a few times and murmur “Amen” and breathe it out again a little louder until I really feel it.
I believe the ununderstandable and know it in my bones.
A little praise never hurt anyone. A little worship goes a long way. It’s the only way mystery becomes visible, tangible, touchable, tastable and understandable.
Amen and Amen again.
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It is not only prayer that gives God glory but work. Smiting on an anvil, sawing a beam, whitewashing a wall, driving horses, sweeping, scouring, everything gives God some glory if being in his grace you do it as your duty.
To go to communion worthily gives God great glory, but to take food in thankfulness and temperance gives him glory too. To lift up the hands in prayer gives God glory, but a man with a dung fork in his hand, a woman with a slop pail, give him glory too.
He is so great that all things give him glory if you mean they should. So then, my brethren, live. ~Gerard Manley Hopkins fromSeeking Peace
On Earth Day, I am reminded that thanks in large part to how messily we humans live, this world is grimy.
So it is an act of worship as well as respect for our nest to work at cleaning up after ourselves. Hands that clean toilets, scrub floors, carry bedpans, pick up garbage might as well be clasped in prayer – within such everyday necessary tasks, God is glorified.
I spend time every day carrying buckets and wielding a pitchfork because it is my way of restoring order to the disorder inherent in my little corner of the planet. It is with gratitude that I’m able to put things to rights, making stall beds tidier for our farm animals by mucking up their messes and in so doing, I’m cleaning up a piece of me at the same time.
I never want to forget the mess I’m in and the mess I am. I never want to forget to clean up after myself. I never want to feel it is a mere and mundane chore to worship with dungfork and slop pail.
It is my privilege in winter, spring, summer or fall, not just on Earth Day. This is His gift to me. It is His Grace that comes alongside me, to help pitch the muck and carry the slop when I think I am too weary to do it myself.
In so doing, I live and breathe in a place made a little cleaner.
photo from Emily Vander Haak
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Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will. Romans 12:2
We live in an imperfect world, with imperfect characters to match. Our imperfections should not keep us from dreaming of better things, or even from trying, within our limits, to be better stewards of the soil, and more ardent strivers after beauty and a responsible serenity. ~Jane Kenyon from “A Garden of My Dreams”
Holy is right outside my back door, whether it is growing in the soil, unfurling in a misty dawn moment or settling beneath an early twilight rainbow serenade.
As a steward for serenity, I want to find beauty in all things and people, aiding its growth and helping it flourish.
I’m not giving up the search.
Even when things get ugly, I’m determined to keep trying, searching out holiness wherever I look and in whoever I meet.
Perhaps that might change my little part of this world.
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