Category: trees

Only a Visitor

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The moment when, after many years
of hard work and a long voyage
you stand in the centre of your room,
house, half-acre, square mile, island, country,
knowing at last how you got there,
and say, I own this,

is the same moment when the trees unloose
their soft arms from around you,
the birds take back their language,
the cliffs fissure and collapse,
the air moves back from you like a wave
and you can’t breathe.

No, they whisper. You own nothing.
You were a visitor, time after time
climbing the hill, planting the flag, proclaiming.
We never belonged to you.
You never found us.
It was always the other way round.
~Margaret Atwood “The Moment”from Eating Fire

The farm where we live has fields on a hill with woods. Evening walks are listening walks, with birdsong now identifiable thanks to our Merlin app on our phones.

There is always plenty to hear.

It is an immense relief to listen to something other than talking heads on TV or podcasts. The voices we hear in the woods remain unconcerned about politics, hantavirus outbreaks or the state of the economy.

I also listen to the sound of breezes rustling the tree branches, the crunch of sticks and dry leaves under my boots, and more often than not, woodpeckers tapping away at tree trunks, eagles chittering from the treetops, and unseen owls visiting back and forth from their hidey-holes.

So, like the outside world, our farm does have its own talking heads and drama, but I know who I will listen to and where I prefer to hang out if given a choice.

I know I’m only a visitor to their world –
there is no owning this land, only temporary stewardship.
We will be invited back as long as we tread softly.

Until next time then, until next time.

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Not One Will Know

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photo by Josh Scholten

There will come soft rains and the smell of the ground,
And swallows circling with their shimmering sound;

And frogs in the pools, singing at night,
And wild plum trees in tremulous white,

Robins will wear their feathery fire,
Whistling their whims on a low fence-wire;

And not one will know of the war, not one
Will care at last when it is done.

Not one would mind, neither bird nor tree,
If mankind perished utterly;

And Spring herself, when she woke at dawn,
Would scarcely know that we were gone.
~Sara Teasdale “War Time  There will come soft rains”

photo by Josh Scholten

Not much to me is yonder lane  
 Where I go every day;  
But when there’s been a shower of rain  
 And hedge-birds whistle gay,  
I know my lad that’s out in France
 With fearsome things to see  
Would give his eyes for just one glance  
 At our white hawthorn tree.

.    .    .    .  

Not much to me is yonder lane  
 Where he so longs to tread:
But when there’s been a shower of rain  
I think I’ll never weep again  
 Until I’ve heard he’s dead.
~Siegfried Sassoon “The Hawthorn Tree”

…war spreading,
families dying,
the world in danger,
I walk the rocky hillside,
sowing clover…
~by Wendell Berry, “February 2, 1968”, from The Peace of Wild Things

The headlines talk about ceasefires on several fronts –
Ukraine/Russia, Israel/Gaza, Iran/U.S.
yet they seem unconvincing.

Still, with talks of peace, drone bombs fly and reap destruction,
their fire and smoke overpowering any negotiations to stop killings.

Modern war attacks remotely
but death is never remote.
It is real and devastating and final.

So the soft rains come,
like long-held-back tears,
trying to heal scarred land
and despairing hearts.

We keep planting for the future,
sowing hope in weary bloody ground.

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This Soft World

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the hard mountains,
and the spears of the trees-
from a distance,
look so soft
~L.L. Barkat

photo by Joel DeWaard
photo by Joel DeWaard
photo by Joel DeWaard

Everyday
I see or hear
something
that more or less

kills me
with delight,
that leaves me
like a needle

in the haystack
of light.
It was what I was born for — 
to look, to listen,

to lose myself
inside this soft world —
~Mary Oliver from “Mindful” from Why I Wake Early

Some days I’m the sharp needle
and other days I’m the pin cushion

Some days I have been both,
probing into others’ lives and feelings,
moving beyond their sharp edges
to find the source of pain.

I wince too,
remembering all too well how it feels.

I notice the gentle light
that floats close to the ground,
that reaches out with cloudy grasp.

This is what I was born for:
destined to be lost
within the softness of each morning,
yet still be found before the end of each day.

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I’ll Take It All…

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She found diamonds
in morning dew,

knew emeralds
from afternoons
of walking Amherst’s
small wilds.

I think of her
tonight, as the golden
hour returns

pouring its light
on spring violets—

amethyst treasure
newly come,
just above the
hill of juniper.
~ L.L. Barkat “After Emily” from Beyond the Glass

More than the fuchsia funnels breaking out
of the crabapple tree, more than the neighbor’s
almost obscene display of cherry limbs shoving
their cotton candy-colored blossoms to the slate
sky of Spring rains, it’s the greening of the trees
that really gets to me. When all the shock of white
and taffy, the world’s baubles and trinkets, leave
the pavement strewn with the confetti of aftermath,
the leaves come. Patient, plodding, a green skin
growing over whatever winter did to us, a return
to the strange idea of continuous living despite
the mess of us, the hurt, the empty. Fine then,
I’ll take it, the tree seems to say, a new slick leaf
unfurling like a fist to an open palm, I’ll take it all.
~Ada Limón  “Instructions on Not Giving Up”

I thought I was emptied out – hollow and irretrievable – after a long drawn out winter of difficult news, and now these cold rainy spring days forecast even more bad news happening in the world.

Yet here I am ~ here we are ~ still among the living and breathing.
I am swept away by what I see greening all around me. 

The landscape begins to explode with layers of color and shadow. Standing close, I too am ignited.  It is impossible to witness so much unfolding life and light and not be engulfed and heartened and singed around my edges.

It lures me outside where flames of green lap about my ankles as I stroll the fields and each fresh breeze fans the fires until I’ve nothing left of myself but ash and shadow.

Consumed and subsumed. 

Combusted and busted.

What a way to go.

I’ll take it. I’ll take it all.

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Bring to Light the Mystery: Unsettled Petals

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sakura217

God is within all things, but not enclosed;
outside all things, but not excluded;
above all things but not aloof;
below all things but not debased.
~St. Bonaventure, 14th C. philosopher and theologian 

wwusakura4
wwusakura6

Beauty, to the Japanese of old, held together the ephemeral with the sacred. Cherry blossoms are most beautiful as they fall, and that experience of appreciation lead the Japanese to consider their mortality.

Hakanai bi (ephemeral beauty) denotes sadness, and yet in the awareness of the pathos of life, the Japanese found profound beauty.

For the Japanese, the sense of beauty is deeply tragic, tied to the inevitability of death.

Jesus’ tears were also ephemeral and beautiful. His tears remain with us as an enduring reminder of the Savior who weeps. Rather than to despair, though, Jesus’ tears lead the way to the greatest hope of the resurrection. Rather than suicide, Jesus’ tears lead to abundant life.
~Makoto Fujimura

Everyone feels grief
when cherry blossoms scatter.
Might they then be tears –
those drops of moisture falling
in the gentle rains of spring?
~Otomo no Juronushi (late 9th century)

fallensakura
fallen sakura petals in Tokyo (photo by Nate Gibson)
sakurarain
fallen sakura blossoms in Tokyo, photo by Nate Gibson

For four decades, as a family physician, I saw patients struggling with depression, some contemplating whether living another day was worth the pain and effort. 

Most described their feelings completely dry-eyed, unwilling to let their emotions flow from inside and flood their outsides. Others sat soaking in tears of hopelessness and despair.

Their weeping moved and reassured me — it is a raw and authentic spilling over when the internal dam is breaking. It is so human, yet we also know tears contain the divine.

When I read that Jesus weeps as He witnesses the tears of grief of His dear friends, I am comforted. He understands and feels what we feel, His tears just as plentiful and salty, His overwhelming feelings of love brimming so full they must be let go and cannot be held back.

Our Jesus who wept with us became a promise of ultimate joy.

There is beauty in this: His rain of tears, the spilling of the divine onto our mortal soil like the unsettled petals of spring.

photo by Nate Gibson

This year’s Barnstorming Lenten theme is Ephesians 3:9:

…to bring to light for everyone what is the plan of the mystery hidden for ages in God, who created all things…

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Bring to Light the Mystery: Every Broken Limb Lit

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My sorrow’s flower was so small a joy
It took a winter seeing to see it as such.
Numb, unsteady, stunned at all the evidence
Of winter’s blind imperative to destroy,
I looked up, and saw the bare abundance
Of a tree whose every limb was lit and fraught with
snow.
What I was seeing then I did not quite know
But knew that one mite more would have been too much.
~Christian Wiman “After a Storm” from Once in the West: Poems

A branch strains mightily to bear
a summer’s bounty of fruit without breaking.

It sustains the load, but may drop some fruit early:
the loss is meant to preserve the tree.

Then comes winter wind and ice storms
when one more snowflake may become the mite too much.

What painful pruning is endured.
Even the strongest branches may break,
or the tree itself toppled.

At what cost do we endure the broken limbs of war?

I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener.  He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit he prunes so that it will be even more fruitful. 
John 15: 1-2

This year’s Barnstorming Lenten theme is Ephesians 3:9:

…to bring to light for everyone what is the plan of the mystery hidden for ages in God, who created all things…

Lyrics:
White the sheep that gave the wool
Green the pastures where they fed
Blue and scarlet side by side
Bless the warp and bless the thread

May the charm of lasting life
Be upon your flocks in full
From the hill where they rest
May they rise both whole and well

Bless the man who wears this cloth
May he wounded never be
From the bitter cold and frost
May this cloth protection be

Bless the children warmed within
Three times three our love enfold
Peace and plenty may they find
May they grow both wise and bold

Now is waulked the web we’ve spun
Winter storms may rage in vain
Bless the work by which we won
Comfort from the wind and rain

White the sheep that gave the wool
Green the pastures where they fed
Blue and scarlet side by side
Bless the warp and bless the thread

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Finding a Lovely Thing

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Look for a lovely thing and you will find it,
It is not far —
It never will be far.
~Sara Teasdale from “Night”

Queen Anne’s lace

                a hardly

                    prized but

            all the same it isn’t

                     idle look

                                    how it

                    stands straight on its

            thin stems how it 

                    scrubs its white faces

                        with the

            rays of the sun how it

                                makes all the

                                        loveliness

                                                it can.
~Mary Oliver “Passing the Unworked Field“

Until I opened my eyes to see,

I passed by lovely things all the time,
my thoughts grousing in the grayness of the day.
Oblivious and self-absorbed,
blinded to the gifts around me.

It only takes a heart open
to unexpected beauty,
not far,
really never far–
right there in our own back yard.

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Let Us Be Luminous

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The February sunshine steeps your boughs
and tints the buds and swells the leaves within.
~William C. Bryant from “Among the Trees”

The sun was everywhere yesterday, thawing the frost layer on the metal roof of the barn to the point of seeping through the cracks, splattering with drops inside like taking an indoor shower during chores. I kept my hood on while I cleaned stalls, all the while trying to dodge the dripping.

The sun rays are trying to burst through our layers to activate Vitamin D thirsty skin, and there is actual warmth on our cheeks as we look up, squinting at the unaccustomed brightness.

At last, oh at last — after months of gray misty drizzle. It may be only a tease and not the real thing. Rain is back today and sub-freezing temperatures are forecast again over the next week.

Even so, the soil is feeling seduced. The snowdrop sprouts have thrust through the frozen ground and crocus are peeking out hopefully on our side of the crust rather than staying tentative and hidden down under.

This brief glimpse of spring was worth waiting for, even if winter breaks loose again for a few weeks and plunges us back into doldrums and gloom. If only a peek, it is still promise of a coming renewal and rebirth.

We won’t always have to dwell in darkness. 

Let us be luminous.

photo by Josh Scholten
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No Trifling Matter

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For the bark, dulled argent, roundly wrapped
And pigeon-collared.
 
For the splitter-splatter, guttering
Rain-flirt leaves.
 
For the snub and clot of the first green cones,
Smelted emerald, chlorophyll.
 
For the scut and scat of cones in winter,
So rattle-skinned, so fossil-brittle.
 
For the alder-wood, flame-red when torn
Branch from branch.
 
But mostly for the swinging locks
Of yellow catkins.
 
Plant it, plant it,
Streel-head in the rain.
~Seamus Heaney “Planting the Alder” with an explanation of some of the poet’s poetic words here

Alder catkin,
weightless as down,
only blow it away
and all changes utterly,
and life, it appears,
is not such a trifling matter,
when nothing about it
seems merely a trifle.
…an alder catkin
lies in my palm,
and quivers, as if living..
~Yevgeny Yevtushenko from “Alder Catkin” translated by Arthur Boyars and Simon Franklin

The alder tree branches are still winter-naked as their catkins start to emerge, other-worldly in appearance.

The swinging catkins search out every breeze to spread pollen as far as possible, engaging in serious alder-production business. It’s effective, as annually our pastures fill with baby alder trees, eager to form their own dense community in the wet ground of our lowlands.

In its desire to dominate the woodlands and allergies here in the northwest, the alder catkin is nothing to trifle with. Though we don’t want a field full of them, I can’t help but admire them this time of year for their bold color and knobby texture, reminiscent of the upholstery of my family’s well-loved 1950’s davenport sofa which converted to a bed for sick kids or visiting cousins.

Another world, another life-time full of dreams…

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A Thousand Thoughts

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Yes, I know my mind is a fickle little bee
doting on a thousand thoughts, but I’m getting
better at chasing my mind back to the moment

so I can see the spiderwebs making hammocks
the color of the moon. My son tries to photograph
a rainbow outside the car window. It’s impossible,

of course, this wonder, the trying to hold it.
But I do what I can. I’ve stopped waiting to enjoy
the cinnamon tea. I take deeper breaths and listen

to the flutter of strings floating down from café
speakers. I don’t want to be a pilgrim of memory
anymore. I want to pop the champagne and salute

this now, and this one with soft brie, dried apricots,
and the sunset celebration another anniversary
of light while I eat fists of grapes the same shade

and sweetness of night. Congratulations, Time. Look
at you and your gorgeous minutes full of everything.
Three cheers for the temp agency that hired this

particular day, these particular clouds, this set
of honking geese migrating through it. I want to be
better at being alive, so I’ve been picturing my heart

as a fox—which means wild and nocturnal, not
terrorizing the neighbor’s chickens. My love says
most equations in quantum field theory give infinity

as an answer, which is not meaningful because all
infinities are the same. In that case, let’s stop reaching
so hard for it. I’ll take this infinity’s morning where

my son and I confused falling leaves for monarchs.
Every time we thought we saw a butterfly, it was
just a leaf with the gentlest falling. We laughed at

every mistake, and he said, That was a beautiful
confusion. Sometimes when the moment doesn’t offer
a praying mantis on the porch or a charismatic sky,

I imagine my heart is my son’s face, and I am back
in love with the day, its astonishments like hot-air
balloons, and the daily present of power lines strung

with starlings like dozens of music notes. Let me
be more bound to my living in each moment, be held
by this hum, that cloud, this breath, that shroud.
~Traci Brimhall “This Beautiful Confusion” from Love Prodigal

Some Monday mornings, my mind is going in a thousand different directions. So I follow, knowing there will never be another Monday morning quite like this one. I hope there will be a few hundred more Monday mornings to come.

I want to be better at being alive,
noticing, remembering, connecting,
and grateful to be breathing.

Perhaps you are here because — you do too…

our sons – 1990
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