Category: trees

Wax and Wane

barnstormingblog5 Comments

chestnutspring3

 

chestnutspring4

chestnutspring5

 

Out in the rain a world is growing green,
   On half the trees quick buds are seen
       Where glued-up buds have been.
Out in the rain God’s Acre stretches green,
   Its harvest quick tho’ still unseen:
       For there the Life hath been.

If Christ hath died His brethren well may die,
   Sing in the gate of death, lay by
       This life without a sigh:
For Christ hath died and good it is to die;
   To sleep when so He lays us by,
       Then wake without a sigh.

Yea, Christ hath died, yea, Christ is risen again:
   Wherefore both life and death grow plain
       To us who wax and wane;
For Christ Who rose shall die no more again:
   Amen: till He makes all things plain
       Let us wax on and wane.
~Christina Rossetti “Easter Monday”

 

chestnutspring6

chestnutspring7

chestnutspring8

On this day after Easter, this Easter Monday, we can too quickly settle back to routine as if nothing special happened. This was not the case when Jesus would appear in a room of people, joining others walking on a road, cooking breakfast for His friends by the lake.

So we look for Him to make things plain to us: we watch the waxing and waning of the seasons, of the living and dying around us, indeed, our own waxing and waning, living and dying. The transformation from death to life yesterday is everywhere we look, if we look.

The huge chestnut tree in our front yard is filled with such chrysalises of metamorphosis, from bud to green-winged butterfly leaf.

We are waxing on in Christ who shall die no more.

Amen and Amen.

 

chestnutspring9

 

chestnuttexture

 

Between Midnight and Dawn: The One Who Waits For Us

barnstormingblog1 Comment

cloverrain2

frontyardviolet2

As the rain and the snow
    come down from heaven,
and do not return to it
    without watering the earth
and making it bud and flourish,
    so that it yields seed for the sower and bread for the eater,
11 so is my word that goes out from my mouth:
    It will not return to me empty,
but will accomplish what I desire
    and achieve the purpose for which I sent it.
12 You will go out in joy
    and be led forth in peace;
the mountains and hills
    will burst into song before you,
and all the trees of the field
    will clap their hands.
Isaiah 55:10-12

skagitflats216

And when music comes to us
With its heavenly beauty
It brings us desolation
For when we hear it
We half remember
That lost native country

We dimly remember the fields
Their fragrant windswept clover
The birdsongs in the orchards
The wild white violets in the moss
By the transparent streams

And shining at the heart of it
Is the longed-for beauty
Of the One who waits for us
Who will always wait for us
In those radiant meadows

Yet also came to live with us
And wanders where we wander.
~Anne Porter from “Music”

evening33164

as these wind-tossed days blow out
our lights and our heat,
as storms of life
take our energy and leave us limp,
out fitful sleep becomes refuge
instead of restoration

to wander this blustery path
alongside the One who
readies us for the coming radiance
of meadow blooms,
of bird song
and sleigh bell frog chorus
and trees clap their hands

this is a timely remembrance
of His promises kept~
this is not all there is

 

willowtree3

 

During this Lenten season, I will be drawing inspiration from the new devotional collection edited by Sarah Arthur —Between Midnight and Dawn

Sourceless Light

barnstormingblog3 Comments

sosoft3

sunset15161

Some ask for the world
and are diminished
in the receiving
of it. You gave me
only this small pool
that the more I drink
from, the more overflows
me with sourceless light.
~R.S. Thomas  “Gift”

______________

A silence slipping around like death,
Yet chased by a whisper, a sigh, a breath,
One group of trees, lean, naked and cold,
Inking their crest ‘gainst a sky green-gold,
One path that knows where the corn flowers were;
Lonely, apart, unyielding, one fir;
And over it softly leaning down,
One star that I loved ere the fields went brown.
~Angelina Weld Grimke “A Winter Twilight”

_______________

I am astonished at my thirstiness
slaked by such simple things
as a moment of pink,
a burst of birdsong,
the softness of fluff about to let go,
a glimpse of tomorrow over the horizon of today.

sunrise1226153

sunset822151

sunset17163

 

A Faithless Tree

barnstormingblog4 Comments

frontyardwalnut

evening1316

aleaf3

 

Each year I mark one lone outstanding tree,
Clad in its robings of the summer past,
Dry, wan, and shivering in the wintry blast.
It will not pay the season’s rightful fee,—
It will not set its frost-burnt leafage free;
But like some palsied miser all aghast,
Who hoards his sordid treasure to the last,
It sighs, it moans, it sings in eldritch glee.
A foolish tree, to dote on summers gone;
A faithless tree, that never feels how spring
Creeps up the world to make a leafy dawn,
And recompense for all despoilment bring!
Oh, let me not, heyday and youth withdrawn,
With failing hands to their vain semblance cling!
~Edith Matilda Thomas “Winter Leafage”

_________________________

Decades ago, while I worked as a nurses’ aide in a nursing home, I cared for a little slip of a lady almost 100 years of age who would not go down the hall to breakfast without her make up on.  Wearing makeup was more important than putting on clothing to her, so our daily morning routine was prolonged considerably as she meticulously penciled over her invisible eyebrows, caked on powder on her forehead, nose and cheeks to cover the wrinkles, and tremulously applied a wavery thick border of red lipstick on her thin lips.  I tried to tell her how lovely she was without a mask on, how her weathered skin deserved to be seen and admired, how her eyes shone more brightly without the crumbling mascara on non-existent eyelashes.  She would have none of it.  She had never appeared in public without her makeup since her teenage years, and she was not about to start now.

She clung to the fading leaves of her youth, holding on with all her might to what she believed kept her beautiful, so we continued to preserve her “frost-burnt leafage”,  covering up her thin bones and her wrinkled face.

She died quietly in her sleep one night so my morning duty was to prepare her body for the coming mortician.  I washed her lovely face clean for the last time, admiring her without the cover, appreciating each wrinkle’s fold and crevice, knowing she now was made new in a leafy dawn I could only imagine.

The mortician would do what was needed to dress her up to her specifications.  But only I had seen the beauty underneath.

geese1119154

 

barebones7

sunset1111154

Trees Are Undressing

barnstormingblog1 Comment

chestnutmaple

octleaves8

eveningfog3cottonwoodrain

madronanaked

The trees are undressing, and fling in many places—
On the gray road, the roof, the window-sill—
Their radiant robes and ribbons and yellow laces;
A leaf each second so is flung at will,
Here, there, another and another, still and still.

A spider’s web has caught one while downcoming,
That stays there dangling when the rest pass on;
Like a suspended criminal hangs he, mumming
In golden garb, while one yet green, high yon,
Trembles, as fearing such a fate for himself anon.
~Thomas Hardy “Last Week in October”

So we too will be flung into the unknown,
trembling in the chill wind,
unready to let go of what sustains us,
fated to land wherever the storm blows.

If caught up by a silken thread,
left to dangle suspended by faith
to await the hope of rescue, alone and together,
another and another, still and still.

danglingleaf1

maplecolor

poplargold

maple3

maple10141

scanlon4

Leaves and Bounding Fruit

barnstormingblog6 Comments

frontyard1

walnuthull5

mistyfrontyard

My mother and I debate:
we could sell
the black walnut tree
to the lumberman,
and pay off the mortgage.
Likely some storm anyway
will churn down its dark boughs,
smashing the house. We talk
slowly, two women trying
in a difficult time to be wise.
Roots in the cellar drains,
I say, and she replies
that the leaves are getting heavier
every year, and the fruit
harder to gather away.
But something brighter than money
moves in our blood – an edge
sharp and quick as a trowel
that wants us to dig and sow.
So we talk, but we don’t do
anything.

What my mother and I both know
is that we’d crawl with shame
in the emptiness we’d made
in our own and our fathers’ backyard.
So the black walnut tree
swings through another year
of sun and leaping winds,
of leaves and bounding fruit,
and, month after month, the whip-
crack of the mortgage.
~Mary Oliver from “The Black Walnut Tree” from Twelve Moons

 

We bought this old farm twenty five years ago:
the Lawrence family “Walnut Hill Farm”~
a front yard lined with several tall black walnut trees
brought as seedlings in a suitcase from Ohio
in the ought-1900’s.

These trees thrived for 80 years on this hilltop farm
overlooking the Canadian mountains to the north,
the Nooksack River valley to the west,
the Cascade peaks to the east,
each prolific in leaves
and prodigious in fruit.

The first year we were here,
a windstorm took one tree down.
A neighbor offered
to mill the twisted trunk for shares
so the fallen tree became planks
of fine grained chocolate hued lumber.

This old tree lines our kitchen cupboards,
a daily reminder of an immortality
living on in a legacy left behind~
sturdy while imperfect,
so beautiful to the eye and the heart.

 

 

walnuthulls2

hulls

morninglight3

barewalnut

blackwalnut

Begin the Hours Slow

barnstormingblogLeave a comment
 dogwoodoct1
octchestnut2
octleaves1
O hushed October morning mild,
Thy leaves have ripened to the fall;
Tomorrow’s wind, if it be wild,
Should waste them all.
The crows above the forest call;
Tomorrow they may form and go.
O hushed October morning mild,
Begin the hours of this day slow.
Make the day seem to us less brief.
Hearts not averse to being beguiled,
Beguile us in the way you know.
Release one leaf at break of day;
At noon release another leaf;
One from our trees, one far away.
Retard the sun with gentle mist;
Enchant the land with amethyst.
Slow, slow!
For the grapes’ sake, if they were all,
Whose leaves already are burnt with frost,
Whose clustered fruit must else be lost—
For the grapes’ sake along the wall.
~Robert Frost “October”
I long to be beguiled by slower days;
each leaf of mine dropped
one at a time, sorely missed
until there is none of me left.
Slow me down slowly,
hushed and enchanted.
dogwoodoct3
scanlon4
3rgrapes

Making the Cosmos New

barnstormingblog1 Comment
sunrise1017151
octleaves7
octleaves5
Grace does not remain outside
or above
or beside nature
but rather permeates
and wholly renews it.
And thus nature,
reborn by grace,
will be brought to its highest revelation.
That situation will again return in which
we serve God freely and happily,
without compulsion or fear,
simply out of love,
and in harmony with our true nature.
Christianity does not introduce
a single substantial foreign element
into the creation.
It creates no new cosmos
but rather makes the cosmos new.
It restores what was corrupted by sin.
It atones the guilty
and cures what is sick;
the wounded it heals.
~Herman Bavinck from “Common Grace”
As we wither, our colors changing
as we die,
we are cured,
our nature reborn
by transforming amazing grace.
Renewed,
we respond
in love.
Let it be with me
as You have said.
octleaves3
morningleaf
octhydrangea
sunset827151

Late Revelers at Dawn

barnstormingblog3 Comments

sunrise101215

frontyard1015

bluestskies

eveninglight1010151

Bending above the spicy woods which blaze,
Arch skies so blue they flash, and hold the sun
Immeasurably far; the waters run
Too slow, so freighted are the river-ways
With gold of elms and birches from the maze
Of forests. Chestnuts, clicking one by one,
Escape from satin burs; her fringes done,
The gentian spreads them out in sunny days,
And, like late revelers at dawn, the chance
Of one sweet, mad, last hour, all things assail,
And conquering, flush and spin; while, to enhance
The spell, by sunset door, wrapped in a veil
Of red and purple mists, the summer, pale,
Steals back alone for one more song and dance.
~Helen Hunt Jackson “October”

 

Summer is stretching long this fall,
with warm temperatures both day and night,
grass growing like spring
bushes blooming confused six months off
sun rises lit by flame that lick the sky.

I am eager for one more song and dance,
one more sweet hour,
each dawn bringing renewed revelry.

chestnutpod

 

chestnut

 

sunrise1012153

sunset827152