In truth I am puzzled most in life by nine horses.
Two are on one side of the fence and seven on the other side.
They stare at one another from the same places hours and hours each day.
This is another unanswerable question to haunt us with the ordinary.
We live far out in the country where I hear creature voices night and day.
Like us they are talking about their lives on this brief visit to earth.
In truth each day is a universe in which we are tangled in the light of stars.
Stop a moment. Think about these horses in their sweet-smelling silence. ~Jim Harrison from “Horses”
What is this life is, full of care We have no time to stand and stare. No time to stand beneath the boughs And stare as long as sheep or cows. No time to see, when woods we pass, Where squirrels hide their nuts in grass. No time to see, in broad daylight, Streams full of stars, like skies at night. No time to turn at Beauty’s glance, And watch her feet, how they can dance. No time to wait till her mouth can Enrich that smile her eyes began. A poor life this if, full of care, We have no time to stand and stare. ~William Henry Davies “Leisure”
Fingers of twilight shadow begin to reach over the hill crawling down through the field up unto the bank of blackberries covering fences along the alder grove.
Our horses chew their last clover leafs before coming to the barn for night, eyelids heavy, relaxed and full, drowsy with summer evening peace at hand and hoof.
A sudden change in the air forces their heads up and ears forward; they form a line, standing and staring at the hilltop above them, riveted to the spot, alert to an incoming intruder, unfamiliar and foreign.
The roar is intermittent, like a warm wind rattling a barn roof, but inconstant; then peaking over the crest of the hill a rounded top of technicolor glory:
The hot air balloon rises.
The horses riveted, baffled, fascinated; no wild instinct prepares their response to this wizard’s act from Oz in their own backyard.
The basket riders wave and laugh at the equine audience below standing in formation with golden noses in the air and white manes blowing in the breeze.
The balloon summits the hill, dipping low, almost touchable before moving back up to race the sunset, and search out other pastures, other valleys and hills.
The horses released from the spell of “stand and stare” leap in response, snowy tails high, noses flared-
To race up the hill to capture impending darkness, our night-mares cavort, float suspended until their air is let out, gently, in softening snorts, to settle down in a straw bed in the barn where night, becomes blissfully ordinary again.
One-Time
Monthly
Yearly
Make a one-time or recurring donation to support daily Barnstorming posts
It’s a dangerous business, Frodo, going out of your door. You step into the Road, and if you don’t keep your feet, there is no knowing where you might be swept off too. ~J.R.R. Tolkien – Bilbo to Frodo in Fellowship of the Rings
What if this road, that has held no surprises these many years, decided not to go home after all; what if it could turn left or right with no more ado than a kite-tail? What if its tarry skin were like a long, supple bolt of cloth, that is shaken and rolled out, and takes a new shape from the contours beneath? And if it chose to lay itself down in a new way, around a blind corner, across hills you must climb without knowing what’s on the other side, who would not hanker to be going, at all risks? Who wants to know a story’s end, or where a road will go? ~Sheenagh Pugh “What if This Road?”
I do not think that all who choose wrong roads perish; but their rescue consists in being put back on the right road. ~C.S. Lewis from The Great Divorce
We grow accustomed to the Dark — When Light is put away — As when the Neighbor holds the Lamp To witness her Good bye —
A Moment — We Uncertain step For newness of the night — Then — fit our Vision to the Dark — And meet the Road — erect —
And so of larger — Darknesses — Those Evenings of the Brain — When not a Moon disclose a sign — Or Star — come out — within —
The Bravest — grope a little — And sometimes hit a Tree Directly in the Forehead — But as they learn to see —
Either the Darkness alters — Or something in the sight Adjusts itself to Midnight — And Life steps almost straight. ~Emily Dickinson
So few grains of happiness measured against all the dark and still the scales balance.
The world asks of us only the strength we have and we give it. Then it asks more, and we give it. ~Jane Hirschfield from “The Weighing”
I admit I stumble if not careful, bearing some bruises and scrapes from hazards hidden in darkness.
My eyes slowly adjust to such bare illumination, when the Lamp is dim and the road unfamiliar.
I’m feeling my way through uncertainty in this time of life.
I suspect there are fellow darkness travelers who also have lost their way and their Light, giving away what they can and sometimes more than they have.
And so, blinded as we each are, we run forehead-first into the Tree which has always been there and always will be, the symbol of our salvation.
Because of who we are and Who loves us, we, now free and forgiven, safely follow a darkened road made nearly straight, all the way Home.
Lyrics: Tell me where is the road I can call my own, That I left, that I lost, so long ago. All these years I have wondered, oh when will I know, There’s a way, there’s a road that will lead me home.
After wind, After rain, when the dark is done, As I wake from a dream, in the gold of day, Through the air there’s a calling from far away, There’s a voice I can hear that will lead me home.
Rise up, follow me, come away is the call With (the) love in your heart as the only song There is no such beauty as where you belong Rise up, follow me, I will lead you home.
One-Time
Monthly
Yearly
Make a one-time or recurring donation to support daily Barnstorming posts
At the edge of the city, at the edge of the world, at the edge between the earth and endless sky, the moonshining place, the place where we hung our long summer legs over the edge and fought the urge to drop a shoe or sneak a real first kiss, the place where we played hide-and-go-seek and Tag, you’re it! until we couldn’t breathe or the sun went down, the place where we came on the quietest nights to feel the moon kiss the edge between our skin and endless sky. ~Sarah Kobrinsky, from Nighttime on the Otherside of Everything
photo of supermoon by Harry Rodenberger
there will be sun, scalloped by clouds, ushered in by a waterfall of birdsong. It will be a temperate seventy-five, low humidity. For twenty-four hours, all politicians will be silent. Reality programs will vanish from TV, replaced by the “snow” that used to decorate our screens when reception wasn’t working. Soldiers will toss their weapons in the grass. The oceans will stop their inexorable rise. No one will have to sit on a committee. When twilight falls, the aurora borealis will cut off cell phones, scramble the internet. We’ll play flashlight tag, hide and seek, decorate our hair with fireflies, spin until we’re dizzy, collapse on the dew-decked lawn and look up, perhaps for the first time, to read the long lines of cold code written in the stars…. ~Barbara Crooker “Tomorrow” from Some Glad Morning.
The truth of it is: we’re always on the edge of something. Often we’re not aware of it but that’s where some of the best things happen.
Summer itself can lead us right to edge of ourselves, a bright and bold tease to imagine something even more beautiful beyond our reach. It is an invitation to follow the lingering light of the horizon to wherever it may take us.
I can’t help but cling just a while longer before I tumble off the edge of the world.
Lyrics: In love, we find our way With trust, hope remains
I’ll be here Stay right here Don’t you fear
In love, we find our way through the night In love, we find our way
In love, we find a way Your love leads the way
One-Time
Monthly
Yearly
Make a one-time or recurring donation to support daily Barnstorming posts
How beautiful the things are that you did not notice before! A few sweetclover plants Along the road to Bellingham, Culvert ends poking out of driveways, Wooden corncribs, slowly falling, What no one loves, no one rushes towards or shouts about, What lives like the new moon, And the wind Blowing against the rumps of grazing cows. ~Robert Bly from “Like the New Moon I Will Live My Life”
“A devout but highly imaginative Jesuit,” Untermeyer says in my yellowed college omnibus of modern poets, perhaps intending an oxymoron, but is it? Shook foil, sharp rivers start to flow. Landscape plotted and pieced, gray-blue, snow-pocked begins to show its margins. Speeding back down the interstate into my own hills I see them fickle, freckled, mounded fully and softened by millennia into pillows. The priest’s sprung metronome tick-tocks, repeating how old winter is. It asks each mile, snow fog battening the valleys, what is all this juice and all this joy? ~Maxine Kumin “Almost Spring, Driving Home, Reciting Hopkins”
The Robert Bly poem reminds me to see in a new way as I travel the road to Bellingham, Washington (not Bly’s Bellingham, Minnesota).
My eyes scan for the unnoticed and unremarkable, along these rural byways I traveled decades to work, now only to meetings or shopping – when feeling the need to wander and wonder.
Forty years ago in my twice-daily hour-long Seattle traffic commute to reach my clinic, I could only pay attention to the cars around me, blinkered to all else happening.
Since moving north to Whatcom County, I try to notice what small things I might keep handy in my memory for another day, like a jar of canned peaches in our root cellar, just so I won’t forget, ready to pull them off the shelf someday so I might share their sweetness with someone else.
photo by Joel DeWaard
Our goal should be to live life in radical amazement. …to get up in the morning and look at the world in a way that takes nothing for granted. Everything is phenomenal; everything is incredible; never treat life casually. To be spiritual is to be amazed. ~Abraham Joshua Hershel
photo by Harry Rodenberger
One-Time
Monthly
Yearly
Make a one-time or recurring donation to support daily Barnstorming posts
The fate of unborn Millions will now depend, under God, on the Courage and Conduct of this army—Let us therefore rely upon the goodness of the Cause, and the aid of the supreme Being, in whose hands Victory is, to animate and encourage us to great and noble Actions—The Eyes of all our Countrymen are now upon us, and we shall have their blessings, and praises, if happily we are the instruments of saving them from the Tyranny meditated against them. Let us therefore animate and encourage each other, and shew the whole world, that a Freeman contending for Liberty on his own ground is superior to any slavish mercenary on earth. ~George Washington to his troops July 2, 1776
The God who gave us life gave us liberty at the same time: the hand of force may destroy, but cannot disjoin them. –Thomas Jefferson, in “A Summary View of the Rights of British America” Can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are of the gift of God? That they are not to be violated but with his wrath? Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just: that his justice can not sleep forever… ― Thomas Jefferson, in Notes on the State of Virginia on the need for abolition of slavery
Fellow-citizens, we cannot escape history. We of this Congress and this administration, will be remembered in spite of ourselves. No personal significance, or insignificance, can spare one or another of us. The fiery trial through which we pass, will light us down, in honor or dishonor, to the latest generation.
We say we are for the Union. The world will not forget that we say this. We know how to save the Union. The world knows we do know how to save it.
We — even we here — hold the power, and bear the responsibility. In giving freedom to the slave, we assure freedom to the free — honorable alike in what we give, and what we preserve. We shall nobly save, or meanly lose, the last best hope of earth. Other means may succeed; this could not fail.
The way is plain, peaceful, generous, just — a way which, if followed, the world will forever applaud, and God must forever bless. ~Abraham Lincoln in his 1862 address to Congress
This country will not be a good place for any of us to live in unless we make it a good place for all of us to live in. ~ Theodore Roosevelt
If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself. ~James Madison
Fifty years ago this week, I was impatiently marking time as a new college graduate awaiting my first day of medical school to commence. I was too self-absorbed to pay much attention to the significance of the 200th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence from British rule.
That changed when two British student friends arrived in my home town on a summer Greyhound Bus tour of the U.S. right before the 4th. They were most gracious watching the extravagant folderol of a community’s traditional Fourth of July patriotism and fireworks. It was a curiosity to them, given their visitor perspective, coming from “historical enemy” territory.
Their perception was: the U.S. as a broiling work in progress, still much unsettled and somewhat unsettling.
I wonder if Thomas Jefferson, architect of the words we celebrate today, would still be trembling for his country?
I believe he would, considering his views were radical in his day, his religious convictions unconventional, and his plantation managed by slaves of African descent. He personally understood the moral quicksand on which he tenuously stood–the conflict he felt was as close as the maintenance of his home and his own mixed-race children. He would mourn the modern abuse of our liberties secured through the blood of our forefathers, our brothers, sisters and children.
Today we are sinking deeply in that same quicksand, having done no better than Jefferson at forging a personal and moral foundation on which to firmly stand. We have squandered our autonomy with selfishness rather than a selflessness borne of gratitude for the gift of freedom.
Some in leadership want to exponentially increase and secure what they consider their personal due, before considering, out of humility, others who have greater needs first. We use up land and animals and water without regard to those who will come after us, failing to be stewards of the garden so generously given to our care.
History as recorded in the Word and elsewhere shows when everyone does as they see fit, there is no immunity from judgment and wrath:
In those days there was no king in Israel, but every man did that which was right in his own eyes. Judges 17:6
And how well is that working out for us with the attitudes of our current leadership? We continue unsettled and unsettling, a country of paradoxical perspective about what true freedom means.
In Biblical times, it took a true servant King sacrificing Himself to save us from destroying ourselves. Even now, He continues to try, awaiting our sincere repentance and response.
We should be trembling…
partial lyrics: And I don’t know a soul who’s not been battered I don’t have a friend who feels at ease I don’t know a dream that’s not been shattered Or driven to its knees
But it’s alright, it’s alright For we lived so well so long Still, when I think of the Road we’re traveling on I wonder what’s gone wrong I can’t help it, I wonder what has gone wrong
Lyrics: This is my song, O God of all the nations, A song of peace for lands afar and mine. This is my home, the country where my heart is, Here are my hopes, my dreams, my holy shrine. But other hearts in other lands are beating, With hopes and dreams as true and high as mine.
My country’s skies are bluer than the ocean, And sunlight beams on cloverleaf and pine. But other lands have sunlight too, and clover, And skies are everywhere as blue as mine. This is my song, O God of all the nations, A song of peace for their land and for mine.
So let us raise this melody together, Beneath the stars that guide us through the night; If we choose love, each storm we’ll learn to weather, Until true peace and harmony we find, This is our song, a hymn we raise together; A dream of peace, uniting humankind.
One-Time
Monthly
Yearly
Make a one-time or recurring donation to support daily Barnstorming posts
A happy arrangement: many people prefer cats to other people, and many cats prefer people to other cats. ~Mason Cooley
The real objection to the great majority of cats is their insufferable air of superiority. Cats, as a class, have never completely got over the snootiness caused by the fact that in Ancient Egypt they were worshipped as gods. This makes them too prone to set themselves up as critics and censors of the frail and erring human beings whose lot they share. They stare rebukingly. They view with concern. And on a sensitive man this often has the worst effects, inducing an inferiority complex of the gravest kind. ~P.G.Wodehouse from The Story of Webster
Cat! who hast pass’d thy grand climacteric, How many mice and rats hast in thy days Destroy’d? How many tit bits stolen? Gaze With those bright languid segments green, and prick Those velvet ears — but pr’ythee do not stick Thy latent talons in me — and upraise Thy gentle mew — and tell me all thy frays, Of fish and mice, and rats and tender chick. Nay, look not down, nor lick thy dainty wrists– For all thy wheezy asthma — and for all Thy tail’s tip is nick’d off — and though the fists Of many a maid have given thee many a maul, Still is that fur as soft, as when the lists In youth thou enter’dest on glass bottled wall. ~John Keats “Sonnet to Mrs. Reynold’s Cat”
Our farm cats tolerate one another. Barely.
Yet they agree on one thing: no additional cats are welcome here. They are inhospitable to any wandering feral kitty who happens to pussy-foot through to check out the food dishes by the front porch and the back porch.
Those are run off with hisses and spits.
The cats have their own agreed-upon hierarchy about who approaches the food dish first and it is not negotiable.
And when it is time for an occasional necessary group therapy session to work out their differences, they practice social distancing with extreme care, so as not to offend one another.
These cats prefer a solitary life, unless forced into couples counseling by the farm owner because of a spat over shared territory. They are determined not to be dependent on anyone or anything and prefer to blend camouflaged into the background, ready to capture any rodent or bird who happens by.
Clearly, they know they are the superior species. We exist to serve them. And they tolerate us living here with them. Barely.
One-Time
Monthly
Yearly
Make a one-time or recurring donation to support daily Barnstorming posts
What shall I say, because talk I must? That I have found a cure for the sick? I have found no cure for the sick but this crooked flower which only to look upon all men are cured. This is that flower for which all men sing secretly their hymns of praise! This is that sacred flower! ~William Carlos Williams from “The Yellow Flower”
The nail of each big toe was the horn of a goat. Thick as a thumb and curved, it projected down over the tip of the toe to the underside. With each step, the nail would scrape painfully against the ground and be pressed into his flesh. There was dried blood on each big toe.
It took an hour to do each big toe. The nails were too thick even for my nail cutters. They had to be chewed away little by little, then flattened out with the rasp, washed each toe, dried him off, and put his shoes and socks back on. He stood up and took a few steps, like someone who is testing the fit of a new pair of shoes.
“How is it?” “It don’t hurt,” he said, and gave me a smile that I shall keep in my safety deposit box at the bank until the day I die.
I never go to the library on Wednesday afternoon without my nail clippers in my briefcase. You just never know. ~Richard Selzer from “Toenails” from Letters to a Young Doctor
I know for a while again the health of self-forgetfulness, looking out at the sky through a notch in the valleyside, the black woods wintry on the hills, small clouds at sunset passing across. And I know that this is one of the thresholds between Earth and Heaven, from which even I may step forth and be free. – Wendell Berry from “Sabbath Poems”
Whenever I lose perspective about what I was trained to do and who I am meant to serve, when I wallow in the mud of self-importance rather than in the health of self-forgetfulness~
On those clinic days when I would wash out a plug of wax from a deaf ear and miraculously restore hearing or remove a painful thorn in a festering thumb or clip someone’s crippling toenails so they can step forth in freedom or I simply sit still as someone cries out their heart’s pain
I would cling to that crooked flower of healing and forgiveness I was handed over fifty years ago, sharing its sacred sweetness with another.
I was given these tools for a reason, and try to still use them.
You just never know.
One-Time
Monthly
Yearly
Make a one-time or recurring donation to support daily Barnstorming posts
The mare roamed soft about the slope, Her rump was like a dancing girl’s. Gentle beneath the apple trees She pulled the grass and shook the flies, Her forelocks hung in tawny curls, She had a woman’s limpid eyes, A woman’s patient stare that grieves. And when she moved among the trees, The dappled trees, her look was shy, She hid her nakedness in leaves. A delicate though weighted dance She stepped while flocks of finches flew From tree to tree and shot the leaves With songs of golden twittering; How admirable her tender stance. And then the apple trees were new, And she was new, and we were new, And in the barns the stallions stamped And shook the hills with trumpeting. ~Ruth Stone, “The Orchard” from What Love Comes To
Only one retired Haflinger mare remains on our farm now, her small herd diminishing one at a time as they passed from old age. She now is thirty herself, living her remaining days with two geldings in their twenties.
Over four decades, we have kept over a dozen mares born on this land, where they served us well, birthing us their foals and working when asked. In their retirement, they deserved this easy life on pasture for as long as their legs and feet could carry them up and down the slopes of our hilly farm – they more and more resembled our ancient crooked crippled orchard trees, some of which have toppled in the winter winds..
We are close to the end of our horse-keeping days; hard decisions must be made at some point and I don’t feel quite prepared to determine when they are no longer enjoying their time under the sun and I am too frail to care for them as they deserve.
I don’t want them or me to topple over like an old hollow tree in the wind.
I listen for their nickers as I come into the barn each morning and gauge their eagerness to be set free to the fields. The other day, as the sky was gray with a passing rain shower, the geldings went outside happily. As I let our mare out to pasture, she stopped on her way through the gate and turned around, poised to head back to the barn rather than get wet.
I looked her in the eyes and understood exactly how she was feeling.
Perhaps I have identified a bit too much with the stiffness as my aging mares move, their need for frequent napping times in the field, swishing at flies while they dream of younger days of flirting with stallions, nursing babies, having suppler joints and the occasional wild gallop at twilight.
I sing a sad lullaby to myself as I work about the barn with slow deliberation, knowing there is a somber sorrow to life change. The years pass, never to return, leaving those limpid eyes, flowing manes and tails in their wake.
Ah, yes, I have had all the pretty little horses…
One-Time
Monthly
Yearly
Make a one-time or recurring donation to support daily Barnstorming posts
They went each to their own house but Jesus went to the Mount of Olives.Early in the morning he came again to the temple. All the people came to him, and he sat down and taught them. The scribes and the Pharisees brought a woman who had been caught in adultery, and placing her in the midstthey said to him, “Teacher, this woman has been caught in the act of adultery. Now in the Law, Moses commanded us to stone such women. So what do you say?” This they said to test him, that they might have some charge to bring against him.
Jesus bent down and wrote with his finger on the ground.And as they continued to ask him, he stood up and said to them, “Let him who is without sin among you be the first to throw a stone at her.” And once more he bent down and wrote on the ground. But when they heard it, they went away one by one, beginning with the older ones, and Jesus was left alone with the woman standing before him. Jesus stood up and said to her, “Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?” She said, “No one, Lord.”
And Jesus said, “Neither do I condemn you; go, and from now on sin no more.” John 7:53 – John 8:11
[The earliest manuscripts and many other ancient witnesses do not have John 7:53—8:11. A few manuscripts include these verses, wholly or in part, after John 7:36, John 21:25, Luke 21:38 or Luke 24:53.]
The adulterous woman is brought alone by the Jewish authorities for judgement, to be humiliated by serving as a test case for Jesus. This incident was not so much about justice as it was about seeing how Jesus would react to her situation.
His response is not what they expected.
He stoops to the ground, taking his time, avoiding their gaze, writing something (inscrutable to the reader) in the dirt. He then stands to look them in the eye to state what is necessary before acting out the law’s justice: only those who have not sinned will be first to cast the stone at a sinner.
Then he kneels again to trace His finger through the dirt — outlining each person’s sin? naming names? buying time for things to calm down? keeping them guessing? just doodling?
The authorities, knowing their own burden of sin, the oldest of them initially, turn to leave one by one. Soon only the accused woman and Jesus remain.
As St. Augustine writes about this powerful gospel story: “relicti sunt duo, misera et misericordia” which translates to “two were left: misery and mercy.” She, standing in the misery of her sin; He, standing in the glory of His mercy.
No longer condemned while He takes it all on Himself. No stones to throw; free to go; sin no more.
I am reading slowly through the words in the Book of John over the next year alongside my church family. Once a week, I will invite you to “come and see” what those words might mean as we explore His promises together.
One-Time
Monthly
Yearly
Make a one-time or recurring donation to support daily Barnstorming posts
A hundred thousand birds salute the day:– One solitary bird salutes the night: Its mellow grieving wiles our grief away, And tunes our weary watches to delight; It seems to sing the thoughts we cannot say, To know and sing them, and to set them right; Until we feel once more that May is May, And hope some buds may bloom without a blight. This solitary bird outweighs, outvies, The hundred thousand merry-making birds Whose innocent warblings yet might make us wise Would we but follow when they bid us rise, Would we but set their notes of praise to words And launch our hearts up with them to the skies. ~Christina Rossetti “A Hundred Thousand Birds”
Every day is perfect, if when you wake, you hear birds in the garden, in the yard. Birds
up and down, ushering in one more day in all the houses on Shaker Way. Birds on telephone lines, light posts. Birds
twit, twittering on trees hailing fellow birds with a nod of beak—gray kingbird;
top-hatted, streamertail tuxedoed, doctor bird— busy-bodied hummingbird
tucking in, out, of pink, red ixoras punch-drunk in love. Birds preening for, chatting up other birds—
the oriole, the grass quit, in mid-song on the lawn, in a dance of birds an all-day-long conference of bird;
red-headed woodpecker —drummer boy, or girl bird in this daily symphony of birds
—an orchestra on Shaker Way in serenade of each perfect day with birds— from the very first mockingbird
heralding, in solo warble one more day, filled with birds— brightened, lightened, trilled by birds:
Bird, bird, bird. Hello bird. You lift me up bird. You sing the day beautiful, bird. ~Ann-Margaret Lim “Birdsong of Shaker Way”
Birds afloat in air’s current, sacred breath? No, not breath of God, it seems, but God the air enveloping the whole globe of being. It’s we who breathe, in, out, in, the sacred, leaves astir, our wings rising, ruffled—but only saints take flight… But storm or still, numb or poised in attention, we inhale, exhale, inhale, encompassed, encompassed. ~Denise Levertov from “In Whom We Live and Move and Have Our Being”from The Stream and the Sapphire
As if reluctant to let go the setting sun last night, one lone bird still sang a twilight song, long after the others fell asleep, their heads tucked neatly under their wings.
This lone bird had not yet finished the day, breathing in and out its plaintive melody, articulating what my own thoughts could not say.
And before a hint of light this June morning, I am swept from my dreams at 4:30 AM by a full chorus singing from the same tree, no longer a lone voice, but hundreds.
Although my day is launched early by warbling songs, I cannot forget twilight’s one reluctant bird who fought back the impending darkness using only its voice.
I too resist the darkness with what I write here, if only I can keep it at bay: inhaling, exhaling, encompassed in holy Breath.
I want to sing out light and love to Light: encompassed by no darkness here.
I hear a bird chirping, up in the sky I’d like to be free like that spread my wings so high I see the river flowing water running by I’d like to be that river, see what I might find
I feel the wind a blowin’, slowly changing time I’d like to be that wind, I’d swirl and the shape sky I smell the flowers blooming, opening for spring I’d like to be those flowers, open to everything
I feel the seasons change, the leaves, the snow and sun I’d like to be those seasons, made up and undone I taste the living earth, the seeds that grow within I’d like to be that earth, a home where life begins
I see the moon a risin’, reaching into night I’d like to be that moon, a knowing glowing light I know the silence as the world begins to wake I’d like to be that silence as the morning breaks
He doesn’t know the world at all Who stays in his nest and doesn’t go out. He doesn’t know what birds know best Nor what I sing about, Nor what I sing about, Nor what sing about: That the world is full of loveliness.
When dew-drops sparkle in the grass And earth is aflood with morning light. light A blackbird sings upon a bush To greet the dawning after night, the dawning after night, the dawning after night. Then I know how fine it is to live.
Hey, try to open your heart to beauty; Go to the woods someday And weave a wreath of memory there. Then if tears obscure your way You’ll know how wonderful it is To be alive. ~Paul Read
One-Time
Monthly
Yearly
Make a one-time or recurring donation to support daily Barnstorming posts
