I’ll know the names of all of the birds and flowers, and not only that, I’ll tell you the name of the piano player I’m hearing right now on the kitchen radio, but I won’t be in the kitchen,
I’ll be walking a street in New York or London, about to enter a coffee shop where people are reading or working on their laptops. They’ll look up and smile.
Next time I won’t waste my heart on anger; I won’t care about being right. I’ll be willing to be wrong about everything and to concentrate on giving myself away.
Next time, I’ll rush up to people I love, look into their eyes, and kiss them, quick. I’ll give everyone a poem I didn’t write, one specially chosen for that person. They’ll hold it up and see a new world. We’ll sing the morning in, and I will keep in touch with friends, writing long letters when I wake from a dream where they appear on the Orient Express. “Meet me in Istanbul,” I’ll say, and they will. ~Joyce Sutphen “Next Time” from After Words
Oh sure – there are many things I would do differently if I could go back for a do-over. A lifetime is inevitably shot through with mistakes, poor choices and unfortunate opinions; mine is no different.
Yet there isn’t a “next time” or a “do-over.” It’s up to me with the time I have left to correct where I’ve been wrong and avoid repeating history.
Most important, I want to bask in the abundant blessings of the here and now.
I still have time to smile and laugh more, hug more, give myself away more, forgive more, sing more, be more grateful.
With this approach to the world I now occupy, I can share what delights me as it might delight others.
That’s still plenty to ponder and try to get right in this life. I best get to it. Sing the morning in with me, whoever and wherever you are.
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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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All day he’s shoveled green pine sawdust out of the trailer truck into the chute. From time to time he’s clambered down to even the pile. Now his hair is frosted with sawdust. Little rivers of sawdust pour out of his boots.
I hope in the afterlife there’s none of this stuff he says, while I broom off his jeans, his sweater flocked with granules, his immersed-in-sawdust socks. I hope there’s no bedding, no stalls, no barn
no more repairs to the paddock gate the horses burst through when snow avalanches off the roof. Although the old broodmare, our first foal, is his, horses, he’s fond of saying, make divorces.
…he says let’s walk up to the field and catch the sunset and off we go, a couple of aging fools.
I hope, he says, on the other side there’s a lot less work, but just in case I’m bringing tools. ~Maxine Kumin from “Chores”
photo by Emily Vander Haak
They sit together on the porch, the dark Almost fallen, the house behind them dark. Their supper done with, they have washed and dried The dishes–only two plates now, two glasses, Two knives, two forks, two spoons–small work for two. She sits with her hands folded in her lap, At rest. He smokes his pipe. They do not speak, And when they speak at last it is to say What each one knows the other knows. They have One mind between them, now, that finally For all its knowing will not exactly know Which one goes first through the dark doorway, bidding Goodnight, and which sits on a while alone. ~Wendell Berry “They Sit Together on the Porch”
If just for a moment, when this world is tilting so far we just might fall off, we pause to look at where we’ve been and get our feet back under us.
The porch is a good place to start: a bridge to what is beyond without leaving the familiar.
Outside, looking square at the unknown, yet still hearing and smelling and tasting the love that dwells just inside these walls.
What could we want more than to be missed when we step away?
Our voice, our words, our heart, our touch never to be replaced, its absence a hole impossible to fill?
When we are called back inside where Love made us who we are, may the “in between” of time spent on the porch, be even more treasured, because two aging fools sat together there a spell.
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The clouds are low as a blanket. Even the air is tangible, and the steam from the kettle thickens the air like wool. Harvest is full on us; the pressure to preserve builds like a thunderhead.
Shelling peas is fun at first, slitting open the perfect pods, working in rhythm to the pelter of peas ringing in the pot. But then our arms and shoulders ache, the seeds rattle, hollow as bones, and though we should rejoice, another bushel groans before us.
But there in the blancher, the new peas shine fresh and wet, green as emeralds; summer’s sweetness, to be shelved with the long ripe days, eaten with relish, as the butter and juice run in our mouths rare as dandelion wine. ~Barbara Crooker “Putting Up”
My earliest childhood memories include the taste and smell of fresh peas. We lived in farming country north of Seattle where 50 years ago hundreds of acres of peas were grown for canning and freezing. During the harvest, large pea harvesting machines would arrive for several days and travel down the road in caravans of 10 or 12, going from farm to farm to farm. They worked 24 hours a day to harvest as quickly as possible and traveled the roads late at night because they were so huge, they would take up both lanes of the country roads. Inevitably a string of cars would form behind the pea harvesters, unable to pass, so it became a grand annual parade celebrating the humble pea.
The smell in the air when the fields were harvested was indescribable except to say it was most definitely a “green” and deliciously fresh smell. The vines and pods would end up as silage for cattle and the peas would be separated to go to the cannery. I figured those peas were destined for the city dwellers because in our back yard garden, we grew plenty of our own.
Pea seeds, wrinkled and frankly a little boring, could be planted even before the last frost was done with us in March, or even sometimes on Washington’s birthday in February. The soil needed to not be frozen and not be sopping. True, the seeds might sit still for a few weeks, unwilling to risk germination until the coast was clear and soil warmed a bit, but once they were up out of the ground, there was no stopping them. We would generally have several rotations growing, in the hope of a 6 week pea eating season if we were fortunate, before the heat and worms claimed the vines and the pods.
We always planted telephone peas, so the support of the vines was crucial–we used hay twine run up and down between two taut smooth wires attached high and low between two wooden posts. The vines could climb 6 feet tall or better and it was fascinating to almost literally watch the pea tendrils wind their way around the strings (and each other), erotically clinging and wrapping themselves in their enthusiasm.
Once the pods start to form, impatience begins. I’d be out in the garden every day copping feels, looking for that first plump pod to pick and pop open. It never failed that I would pick too soon, and open a pod to find only weenie little peas, barely with enough substance to taste. Within a day or two, however, the harvest would be overwhelming, so we’d have to pick early in the morning while the peas were still cool from the night dew.
Then it was shelling time, which involved several siblings on a back porch, one mother supervising from a distance to make sure there weren’t too many peas being pelted in pique at an annoying little brother, and lots of bowls to catch the peas and the pods. A big paper sack of intact pods would yield only a few cups of peas, so this was great labor for small yield. Opening a pod of peas is extremely satisfying though; there is a tiny audible “pop” when the pod is pressed at the bottom, and then as your thumb runs down the inner seam of the pod loosening all the peas, they make a dozen little “pings” in the bowl when they fall. A symphony of pea shelling often was accompanied by the Beach Boys and the Beatles.
Once the weather got hot, the pea worms would be at work in the pods, so then one encountered wiggly white larvae with little black heads and their webs inside the pods. We actually had a “Wormie” song we sung when we found one, even in the 60’s recognizing that our organic garden meant sharing the harvest with crawling protein critters. The peas would be bored through, like a hollowed out jack o’lantern, so those got dumped in the discard bowl.
The dull green coat of the raw pea turns bright green during the several minutes of blanching in boiling water, then they are plunged into ice water until cool and packed in ziplock bags. Those peas are welcomed to the table during the other 11 months out of the year, sometimes mixed with carrots, sometimes with mushrooms, sometimes chased with a little fresh garlic. They are simply the most lovely food there is other than chocolate.
From an undistinguished pea seed to intricate vines and coiling tendrils–from pregnant pods bursting at the seams to a bounty at meals: the humble pea does indeed deserve a grand parade in the middle of the night.
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See how the trees Reach up and outward As if their entire existence Were an elegant gesture of prayer. See how they welcome the breath of spirit, In all its visible and invisible forms. See how the roots reach downward and out, Embracing the physical, The body and bones Of its soul of earth and stone, Allowing half its life to be sheltered in the most quiet and secret places.
Oh, if I could be more like a tree on this Sunday morning, To feel the breath of invisible spirit Touch me as tenderly as a kiss on the forehead. If I could courageously and confidently Dig down into the dark Where the ground water runs deep, Where shelter and sanctuary Can be had and held.
Ah, to be like a tree With all its bent and unbent places, A whole and holy thing From its topmost twigs To the deepest taproot To all the good and graceful Spaces between. ~Carrie Newcomer “To Be Like a Tree” from The Beautiful Not Yet: Poems, Essays & Lyrics
I love the accomplishments of trees, How they try to restrain great storms And pacify the very worms that eat them. Even their deaths seem to be considered. I fear for trees, loving them so much. I am nervous about each scar on bark, Each leaf that browns. I want to Lie in their crotches and sigh, Whisper of sun and rains to come.
Sometimes on summer evenings I step Out of my house to look at trees Propping darkness up to the silence.
When I die I want to slant up Through those trunks so slowly I will see each rib of bark, each whorl; Up through the canopy, the subtle veins And lobes touching me with final affection; Then to hover above and look down One last time on the rich upliftings, The circle that loves the sun and moon, To see at last what held the darkness up. ~Paul Zimmer “A Final Affection” from Crossing to Sunlight.
The old farmer who sold us this farm 35 years ago made sure we were equipped for a most important role: becoming the caretakers of trees he had planted and watered and loved for decades.
He exacted a promise we would not remove any tree before its time. For the most part, we have been able to do what he asked.
Most trees we’ve lost have succumbed to wind or disease or crippling old age. The old row of poplars became quite hazardous with their breaking branches and invading roots, and a couple old orchard trees gave way for our addition of a garage. For the record, we did feel appropriately guilty about taking their lives.
We have added numerous trees to replace those we have lost. Now we know exactly how that old farmer felt: they become like our children – growing, thriving and fruiting long past our presence here.
These sturdy trunks stand solid, holding the darkness up with their branches, as if in constant prayer to care for us creatures living below.
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There comes the strangest moment in your life, when everything you thought before breaks free— what you relied upon, as ground-rule and as rite looks upside down from how it used to be.
Your heart’s in retrograde. You simply have no choice. Things people told you turn out to be true. You have to hold that body, hear that voice. You’d have sworn no one knew you more than you.
This disease of being “busy” (and let’s call it what it is, the dis-ease of being busy, when we are never at ease) is spiritually destructive to our health and wellbeing.
It saps our ability to be fully present with those we love the most in our families, and keeps us from forming the kind of community that we all so desperately crave.
Tell me you remember you are still a human being, not just a human doing. Tell me you’re more than just a machine, checking off items from your to-do list. Have that conversation, that glance, that touch. Be a healing conversation, one filled with grace and presence.
Put your hand on my arm, look me in the eye, and connect with me for one second. Tell me something about your heart, and awaken my heart. Help me remember that I too am a full and complete human being… ~Omid Safi from The Disease of Being Busy
It has been nearly three years since I hung up my stethoscope. I’m no longer paid to be very busy. It isn’t feeling strange to wake up with no “job” to go to.
I still am vigorously treading water but with no destination in mind other than to stay afloat. It’s enough to just move and breathe in this new and strangely unfamiliar territory.
It was scary at first, backing off from all-consuming clinic responsibilities, yet knowing I was becoming less effective due to my diminishing passion and energy for the work. I’d been working in some capacity for over fifty years, starting in high school.
I could barely remember who I was before I became a physician.
So here I am — changed and changing — volunteering here and there, budding and blooming in new colors and shapes, exercising a different part of my brain, and simply praying I make good use of the time left to me, being something as worthwhile as what I had been doing.
So, once again, my days have become… strangely beautiful… in ways I could never have imagined.
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He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the human heart; yet no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end. Ecclesiastes 3:11
Now all the doors and windows are open, and we move so easily through the rooms. Cats roll on the sunny rugs, and a clumsy wasp climbs the pane, pausing to rub a leg over her head.
All around physical life reconvenes. The molecules of our bodies must love to exist: they whirl in circles and seem to begrudge us nothing. Heat, Horatio, heat makes them put this antic disposition on!
This year’s brown spider sways over the door as I come and go. A single poppy shouts from the far field, and the crow, beyond alarm, goes right on pulling up the corn. ~Jane Kenyon “Philosophy in Warm Weather” from The Boat of Quiet Hours
Whether weather is very hot or very cold, so go our molecules — our atoms are awhirl in order to keep us upright whether we sweat or whether we shiver.
Our doors and windows are flung wide open for fresh air; I’m seeing and hearing and feeling all that I can absorb, to never forget I am a human witness to nothing new under the sun.
Like a dog trying to catch its tail, I’m whirling in circles, round and round, trying to grab hold to a part of me that always manages to elude me.
All things are wearisome, more than one can say. The eye never has enough of seeing, nor the ear its fill of hearing. What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun. Ecclesiastes 1: 8-9
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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”
In recognition of Cow Appreciation Day today:
Most of my life I have been surrounded by cows. I sat on their bony backs while my dad hand-milked our three Guernsey cows. I learned about their pastoral preferences by following their meandering paths through the fields and woods. I know all about their nosiness and their noisiness and their utter fascination with the antics of their humans.
Our family farm had Scottish Highland cattle and cross-breds for a time – raising calves meant monitoring our cows in heat. There isn’t anything else that sounds like a cow in heat. Nothing. Especially in the middle of the night.
During our farm stay travels in Ireland and Scotland a decade ago, we made a point to get to know the local bovines, just for comparison’s sake. Sure enough, the cows there were just as charming and curious as the ones at home, although a bit furrier with more interesting coloration.
We are currently providing temporary lodging for some young steers who need the run of some grassy acreage as they grow and fill out. They are quite content and not the least bit noisy. Having them here reminds me I’ve missed the sound of cows’ reassuring cud chewing, their soft flap of ear, their oval brown eyes, but most of all 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: their cowness is the perfect combination of mystery and magnificence.
And I need to learn how to play the trombone…
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(I wrote this 15 years ago on July 6 and have updated it with an addendum)
I remember childhood summers as 3 months of full-out celebration– long lazy days stretching into nights that didn’t seem to really darken until 11 PM and bright birdsong mornings starting out at 4:30 AM. Not only were there the brief family vacations at the beach or to visit cousins, but there was the Fourth of July, Daily Vacation Bible School, the county fair, family reunions, and of course and most importantly, my July birthday. Yes, there were mundane chores to be done, a garden to tend, a barn to clean, berries to pick, a lawn to mow and all that stuff, but my memories of summer are mostly about fluff and frolic.
So where are the summer parties now? Who is out there celebrating without me? Nothing seems to be spontaneous as it was when I was a child. Instead, most grown-ups have to go to work most days in the summer.
I’m finding myself in the midst of my 55th summer and I have to create celebrations if they are going to happen in my life. Without that perspective, the bird song at 4:30 AM can feel more irritant than blessing and the long days often mean I fall asleep nodding over a book at 9 PM. I want to treasure every, every minute of this precious time yet they flow through my fingers like so much water, faster and faster.
I realize there will be very few “family” summers left as I watch my children grow into adults and spread their wings. They will be on to new adventures in future summers. So each family ritual and experience together takes on special meaning and needs to be appreciated and remembered.
So….for this summer my family has crammed as much in as we can in celebration of the season:
We just spent some time in the hayfields bringing in the bales with friends–our little crew of seven–sweating and itchy and exhausted, but the sight and smell of several hundred hay bales, grown on our own land, harvested without being rained on and piled in the barn is sweet indeed. Weekly we are out on the softball field in church league, yelling encouragement and high-fiving each other, hooting at the good hits and the bad, the great catches and the near misses, and getting dirty and sprained, and as happy to lose as to win. We had a wonderful July 4 barbeque with good friends culminating in the fireworks show on our farm’s hill overlooking miles of valley around us, appreciating everyone else’s backyard displays as well as our own.
We are now able to sing hymns in church in four part harmony, and last night our children helped lead the singing last night in an evening “campfire church” for over fifty fellow worshipers on our hill. In a couple weeks, we’ll take to the beach for three days of playing in the sand, roasting hot dogs. reading good books, and playing board games. We’ll try to make the trek down to Seattle by train to spend the day watching the Mariners play (and likely lose).
One change after seventeen years of hosting a display of our horses at the Lynden Fair: due to “off the farm” work and school schedules, we can’t muster the necessary round-the-clock crew of being there for our little part of small town agricultural pursuits.
Yet the real party happens right here every day in small ways without any special planning. It doesn’t require money or special food or traveling beyond our own soil. It is the smiles and good laughs we share together, and the hugs for kids taller than I am. It’s adult conversations with the new adults in our family–no longer adolescents.
It’s finding delight in fresh cherries from our own trees, currants and berries from our own bushes, greens from the garden, flowers for the table from the yard.
It is the Haflingers in the field that come right up to us to enjoy rubs and scratches and follow us like puppies. It is babysitting for neighborhood toddlers who remind us of the old days of having small children, and who give us a glimpse of future grandparenthood. It is good friends coming from far away to ride our horses and learn farm skills.
It is an early morning walk in the woods or a late evening stroll over the hills. It is daily contact with aging parents who no longer hear well or feel well but nevertheless share of themselves in the ways they are able. It is the awesome power of an evening sunset filled with hope and the calming promise of a new day somewhere else in this world of ours.
Some days may not look or feel like there’s a summer party happening, but that is only because I haven’t searched hard enough. The party is here, sparklers and all, even if only in my own mind.
Addendum: Fifteen years have passed since this was written and I’m glad I can look back and be reminded how full of life those family summers were. We seldom have the full-meal-deal of everyone together at one time, and since our parents have passed on to eternal summers in heaven, we have now the blessings of six grandchildren. Freckles abound!
We still can make a party happen, if only in our own minds.
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…war spreading, families dying, the world in danger, I walk the rocky hillside, sowing clover… ~Wendell Berry “February 2, 1968”
However you may come, You’ll see it suddenly Lie open to the light Amid the woods: a farm Little enough to see Or call across—cornfield, Hayfield, and pasture, clear As if remembered, dreamed And yearned for long ago, Neat as a blossom now With all the pastures mowed And the dew fresh upon it, Bird music all around. That is the vision, seen As on a Sabbath walk: The possibility Of human life whose terms Are Heaven’s and this earth’s.
The land must have its Sabbath Or take it when we starve. The ground is mellow now, Friable and porous: rich. Mid-August is the time To sow this field in clover And grass, to cut for hay Two years, pasture a while, And then return to corn.
This way you come to know That something moves in time That time does not contain. For by this timely work You keep yourself alive As you came into time, And as you’ll leave: God’s dust, God’s breath, a little Light. ~Wendell Berry from The Farm
These are fragrant acres where Evening comes long hours late And the still unmoving air Cools the fevered hands of Fate.
Meadows where the afternoon Hangs suspended in a flower And the moments of our doom Drift upon a weightless hour.
And we who thought that surely night Would bring us triumph or defeat Only find that stars are white Clover at our naked feet. ~Tennessee Williams “Clover”
Farming is daily work outside of the constraints of time – labor done this day is caring for what is eternal, despite weather, war, uncertainty.
There is a timelessness about summer: the preparing and planting and preserving, a cycle of living and dying repeating through generations.
We, like our farming forebears, will become God’s dust again.
I’m reminded, walking through our pasture’s clover, I become seed and soil for the next generation. Like a blossom so plain and unnoticed during its life, I enfolds myself back to the ground, sighing and dying.
Perhaps it is the breath of clover we should remember at the last, as God’s own breath.
Inhale deeply of Him in the dust of the clover field.
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