Category: garden

A Warm and Steady Sweetness

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It’s ripe, the melon
by our sink. Yellow,
bee-bitten, soft, it perfumes
the house too sweetly.
At five I wake, the air
mournful in its quiet.
My wife’s eyes swim calmly
under their lids, her mouth and jaw
relaxed, different.
What is happening in the silence
of this house? Curtains
hang heavily from their rods.
Ficus leaves tremble
at my footsteps. Yet
the colors outside are perfect–
orange geranium, blue lobelia.
I wander from room to room
like a man in a museum:
wife, children, books, flowers,
melon. Such still air. Soon
the mid-morning breeze will float in
like tepid water, then hot.
How do I start this day,
I who am unsure
of how my life has happened
or how to proceed
amid this warm and steady sweetness?
~Albert Garcia “August Morning” from Skunk Talk


I know I am getting old and I say so,
but I don’t think of myself as an old man.
I think of myself as a young man
with unforeseen debilities. Time is neither
young nor old, but simply new, always
counting, the only apocalypse. And the clouds
—no mere measure or geometry, no cubism,
can account for clouds or, satisfactorily, for bodies.
There is no science for this, or art either.
Even the old body is new—who has known it
before?—and no sooner new than gone, to be
replaced by a body yet older and again new.
The clouds are rarely absent from our sky
over this humid valley, and there is a sycamore
that I watch as, growing on the riverbank,
it forecloses the horizon, like the years
of an old man. And you, who are as old
almost as I am, I love as I loved you
young, except that, old, I am astonished
at such a possibility, and am duly grateful.
~ Wendell Berry “VII.” from Leavings. 

…today, the unseen was everything.
The unknown, the only real fact of life.
All this he saw,
for one moment breathless and intense,
vivid on the morning sky;
and still, as he looked, he lived;
and still, as he lived, he wondered.
~Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows

How do I start this day
when I am unsure of the immense unknown?

I begin by looking.
I live with wonder and astonishment;
yet another morning has been gifted to me.

Even if sleep proved elusive,
the air through the windows still warm at midnight.
When even a melon-colored sky looks dry
along with everything beneath it.

When wildfire smoke still drifts in on waves from the north and east, both obscuring and rounding the sharp edges of mountain peaks.

I wonder, grateful, for the sweetness
on this tepid summer morning
offering itself to me.

I’m here.
I look, I live, I wonder.
Let the day begin, opening up into the immense unknown.

Unencumbered by My Old Nonsense

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How did I come to be
this particular version of me,
and not some other, this morning
of purple delphiniums
blooming like royalty,
destined to meet these three dogs
asleep at my feet, and not others—
this soft summer morning,
sitting on her screened porch
become ours, our wind chime
singing of wind and time,
yellow-white digitalis
feeding bees and filling me—
and more abundance to come:
basil, tomatoes, zucchini.
What luck or fate, instinct,
or grace brought me here—
in shade, beneath hidden stars,
a soft, summer morning,
seeing with my whole being,
love made visible.
~Laura Foley “The Once Invisible Garden” from Sledding in the Valley of the Shadow 

Suddenly it is August again, so hot,
breathless heat.
I sit on the ground
in the garden of Carmel,
picking ripe cherry tomatoes
and eating them.
They are so ripe that the skin is split,
so warm and sweet
from the attentions of the sun,
the juice bursts in my mouth,
an ecstatic taste,
and I feel that I am in the mouth of summer,
sloshing in the saliva of August.
Hummingbirds halo me there,
in the great green silence,
and my own bursting heart
splits me with life.
~Anne Higgins “Cherry Tomatoes” from At the Year’s Elbow

photo by Josh Scholten

At five I wake, the air
mournful in its quiet.

Such still air. Soon
the mid-morning breeze will float in
like tepid water, then hot.

How do I start this day,
I who am unsure
of how my life has happened
or how to proceed
amid this warm and steady sweetness?
~Albert Garcia from “August Morning”  from Skunk Talk 

Write it in your heart that every day is the best day of the year.
Live in the sunshine, swim in the sea, breathe the wild air.
Finish each day and be done with it.
You have done what you could.
Some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in;
forget them as soon as you can.
Tomorrow is a new day.
You shall begin it serenely and with too high a spirit
to be encumbered with your old nonsense.
~Ralph Waldo Emerson from Collected Poems and Translations

She has done what she could…
~Mark 14:8

How do I start this gift of a new August summer day?

When sleep is elusive, the air too still and warm at midnight
When even a cloud-strewn sky looks dry
When wildfire smoke drifts in on waves from north and east, obscuring, rounding out the sharp edges

Yet I taste the sweetness offered this tepid summer morning,
unencumbered by my old over-thinking nonsense.

I’m here, present and accounted for, blessed by all I see.
I am doing what I can.
Let the day begin.

Even
After
All this time
The sun never says to the earth,

“You owe
Me.”

Look
What happens
With a love like that,
It lights the
Whole
Sky.
~Daniel Ladinsky, from “The Gift”

In Choral Procession

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In noisy shades
of apricot and pink
the blossoms

of the gladiola open
all down the long aisle
of the stem

like a choral procession
or the woody
notes

of a flute
opening one stop
at a time.
~Linda Pastan “Gladiola”

Most flowers tempt our senses:
vibrant colors to the eye,
softness of the petals to the touch,
delicate fragrances wafting to the nose –
even some have a piquant perfumed taste for the palate.

Yet how many blooms sound like an orchestra
tuning in the wind?

A long gladiola stalk rises boldly,
swaying in the breeze, each key
blossom unfolding one by one in flowing overture,
a kaleidoscope symphone planted in a row.

When each is done with its own ruffled note,
the next one opens to play its part,
in harmony with its neighbor.

The notes progress up the stem
until the final chord is held
~fermata-like~
until performances commence
again next summer.

I’ll be sure to reserve a front row seat.

And Light Splashed…

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Light splashed this morning
on the shell-pink anemones
swaying on their tall stems;
down blue-spiked veronica
light flowed in rivulets
over the humps of the honeybees;
this morning I saw light kiss
the silk of the roses
in their second flowering,
my late bloomers
flushed with their brandy.
A curious gladness shook me.
So I have shut the doors of my house,
so I have trudged downstairs to my cell,
so I am sitting in semi-dark
hunched over my desk
with nothing for a view
to tempt me
but a bloated compost heap,
steamy old stinkpile,
under my window;
and I pick my notebook up
and I start to read aloud
and still-wet words I scribbled
on the blotted page:
“Light splashed…”

I can scarcely wait till tomorrow
when a new life begins for me,
as it does each day,
as it does each day.
~Stanley Kunitz  “The Round” from Passing Through: The Later Poems, New and Selected

It is too easy to be ground to a pulp by the various irritations of the day – aggravations are too easily expressed, worries never seem to wane – all of it sucks gladness out of me. 

When my feelings become four-dimensional and surround and drown me, I lose all perspective on what got me out of bed to begin the day.

God is in these intricate details, whether the splash of light on a petal or the smell of rotting compost; it is my job to notice this. It is tempting to look past His ubiquitous presence in all things, to seek out only the elegant grandeur of creation and bypass the plain and smelly and homely.

Yet even what lacks beauty from my limited perspective is worthy of His divine attention. He knows the value and purpose of each thing He created, including me and the things that aggravate me no end – like mosquitos.

The time has come to be refreshed and renewed
even when surrounded by decay.
His care is revealed in the tiniest way.
He is worthy of my attention because I am constantly worthy of His.

If I rise early enough, I can see each new day’s light splash everything awake. By the time I come in to sit down to record my words and photos, I’m thoroughly washed by a fresh dawn. I can scarcely wait to take on what this day will bring.

I can scarcely wait till tomorrow
when a new life begins for me,
as it does each day,
as it does each day.

Unanswerable Questions

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Under the harvest moon,
When the soft silver
Drips shimmering
Over the garden nights,
Death, the gray mocker,
Comes and whispers to you
As a beautiful friend
Who remembers.

   Under the summer roses
When the flagrant crimson
Lurks in the dusk
Of the wild red leaves,
Love, with little hands,
Comes and touches you
With a thousand memories,
And asks you
Beautiful, unanswerable questions.
~Carl Sandburg “Under the Harvest Moon”

I mistake the sound of a recycling cart
hitting the curb

for the latch of our gate
and picture him instantly:

my father stumbling
into the light of the backyard

to shoot himself.

I’d been looking at the fruit trees
and the fire pit,

the loose board of the old fence
in the wind.

I’d been thinking of how lost
you’d have to be

to believe you knew
everything there was to know

about yourself.
And now this sound

I mistake for my father
going through with it: one

awful letter in his coat pocket
to me, another

to my unborn son.
~Bobby Elliot “Mondegreen” from The Same Man

I’ve been there, and so have you.

I might hear or see or smell something
completely benign and insignificant,
but my brain processes it differently,
its similarity to past memory or experience
bringing it front and center and real again.

Often it is a song, or a smell, or a date on the calendar.
It can be an unexpected, sudden sound,
like a slammed door
or a recorded voice or photo from long ago.

This can lead to time travel
back to that previous moment in time,
with the feeling of being right there again.

It can be a lovely memory, warm and comforting,
or it can be a total nightmare
I never want to remember or reexperience.

When it happens to me,
to distract from the distress it can cause,
I instead admire the stickiness of my stored memories,
how powerful chemical connections are
between my body and my feelings.

There is poignancy in how I
relive those moments of past joy and struggles,
trying to capture in words what just happened,
all the while knowing, for the rest of my days,
some questions will forever remain unanswered.

On a Fine Golden Morning

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Whence comes Solace?—Not from seeing
What is doing, suffering, being,
Not from noting Life’s conditions,
Nor from heeding Time’s monitions;
But in cleaving to the Dream,
And in gazing at the gleam
Whereby gray things golden seem.

II

Thus do I this heyday, holding
Shadows but as lights unfolding,
As no specious show this moment
With its irised embowment;
But as nothing other than
Part of a benignant plan;
Proof that earth was made for man.
~Thomas Hardy “On a Fine Morning”

Whence comes Solace?
Cleaving to the dream, gazing at the gleam…

nothing other than
Part of a benignant plan;
Proof that earth was made for man.

I had to look up “benignant” – it is like being told a concerning tumor is “benign” – granting gracious kindness and beneficence in the midst of deep-seated worry.

A new lease on life.

We forget our original task of caring for the Garden.
Having soiled our own nest, we can’t abandon earth for another greener, brighter, happier planet. Of all the planetary options in this infinite universe, we were placed right here for good reason, and here we remain.

Our solace: all that ordinarily seems gray gleams golden
illuminated by the Light shining down on our shadowy selves.

Even when the news headlines are dismal,
when our individual struggles are great,
when human history seems to keep repeating itself,
our Creation is purposeful,
eternally preserved through divine sacrifice.

The solace of gray shadows melts to gold:
as part of the overall “benignant plan”
we have been given our life back.

So It Goes

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I spent seven hours yesterday at my daughter’s house
helping her expand their garden by at least ten times.
We dug up sod by the shovelful, shook off the dirt as
best we could; sod into the wheelbarrow and off to the
pile at the edge of the yard. Then all that over and over
again. Five hours total work-time, with time out for lunch
and supper. By the time I got home I knew all too well
that seventy-two is not thirty-five; I could barely move.

I got to quit earlier than Nadine. She told me I’d done
enough and that I should go get a beer and lie down on
the chaise lounge and cheer her on, which is what I did.

All this made me remember my father forty years ago
helping me with my garden. My father’s dead now, and
has been dead for many years, which is how I’ll be one
of these days too. And then Nadine will help her child,
who is not yet here, with her garden. Old Nadine, aching
and sore, will be in my empty shoes, cheering on her own.

So it goes. The wheel turns, generation after generation,
around and around. We ride for a little while, get off and
somebody else gets on. Over and over, again and again.
~David Budbill “Seventy-Two Is Not Thirty-Five” from Tumbling toward the End

The wheel turns, we cycle around again, get on and eventually get off.
This is a week of July birthdays in our family, for both old and young.

This hit me when we celebrated our grandson’s third birthday a few days ago in a suburban backyard where my daughter has continued the Gibson/Polis gardening tradition, using the compost we hauled in our truck from our farm several hours away.

Her peas were full and ripe and juicy, her greens lush and tasty – simple perfection thanks to her careful tending.

Meanwhile, our son gardens with his three boys in a very small urban backyard in Denver, teaching them what is weed and what will become a future meal.

I couldn’t help but get weepy, enjoying that special birthday feast.

…and knowing someday, our grandsons will plant and weed and harvest from the soil just as we and their parents did, over and over, again and again.

And this is why my eyes are closed
It’s just as well for all I’ve seen
And so it goes, and so it goes
And you’re the only one who knows
~Billy Joel

Those Quiet Brown Eyes

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Who loves the rain    
    And loves his home, 
And looks on life with quiet eyes,  
     Him will I follow through the storm;    
     And at his hearth-fire keep me warm;
Nor hell nor heaven shall that soul surprise,    
     Who loves the rain, 
     And loves his home, 
And looks on life with quiet eyes.
~Frances Shaw, “Who loves the rain” from Look To the Rainbow of Grace

Now more than ever you can be
generous toward each day
that comes, young, to disappear
forever, and yet remain
unaging in the mind.
Every day you have less reason
not to give yourself away.
~Wendell Berry from “There is no going back”

What a wonder I was
when I was young, as I learn
by the stern privilege
of being old: how regardlessly
I stepped the rough pathways
of the hillside woods,
treaded hardly thinking
the tumbled stairways
of the steep streams, and worked
unaching hard days
thoughtful only of the work,
the passing light, the heat, the cool
water I gladly drank.
~Wendell Berry “VII” 2015 from Another Day

I would like to be the air that inhabits you for a moment only.
I would like to be that unnoticed and that necessary…
~Margaret Atwood

I stop writing the poem
to fold the clothes. No matter who lives
or who dies, I’m still a woman.
I’ll always have plenty to do.
I bring the arms of his shirt 
together. Nothing can stop
our tenderness. I’ll get back
to the poem. I’ll get back to being
a woman. But for now
there’s a shirt, a giant shirt
in my hands, and somewhere a small girl
standing next to her mother
watching to see how it’s done.
~Tess Gallagher “I Stop Writing the Poem”

For Dan’s 73rd birthday…

In this journey together,
we inhabit each other,
however long may be the road we travel;
you have become the air I breathe,
refreshing, renewing, restoring~~
you are that necessary to me,
and that beloved.

Each year, as we grow older together:
grayer, softer, gentler
with ourselves,
each other,
and the world.

I pause to say,
on this day you were born,
thank you, God, yet again
for bringing you to earth
so we could meet,
raise our three amazing children,
and now six grandchildren,
with another on the way,
walking life together
with faith and hope and dreams.

It was your quiet brown eyes I trusted first
and just knew
I’d follow you anywhere,
and I have…

Prickly, Yet Tender-Hearted

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The artichoke
With a tender heart
Dressed up like a warrior,
Standing at attention, it built
A small helmet
Under its scales
It remained
Unshakeable, 

She enters the kitchen
And submerges it in a pot.

Thus ends
In peace
This career
Of the armed vegetable
Which is called an artichoke,
Then
Scale by scale,
We strip off
The delicacy
And eat
The peaceful mush
Of its green heart.
~Pablo Neruda from “Ode to an Artichoke”

She bore only the heart,
Worked at the stem with her
Fingers, pulling it to her,
And into her, like a cord.
She would sustain him,
Would cover his heart.
The hairy needles
And the bigger leaves,
These she licked into shape,
Tipping each with its point.
He is the mud-flower,
The thorny hugger.
~James McMichael “The Artichoke”

I peeled off a leaf like my father did,
dipped it in melted butter, and with my teeth
scraped and sucked the nut-flavored slimy stuff.
We piled up the inedible parts, skeletons
of leaves and purple prickles.

Piece by piece, the artichoke came apart,
the way we would in 1959, the year the flowerbuds
of the artichokes in my father’s garden bloomed
without him, their blossoms seven inches wide
and violet-blue as bruises.

But first we had that miracle on our table.
We peeled and peeled, a vegetable striptease,
and worked our way deeper and deeper,
down to the small filet of delectable heart.
~Diane Lockwood from “The First Artichoke”

I first encountered a globe artichoke in my first week at college in California. I’d never seen one before, much less dismantled and actually eaten one.  The California natives around me in the dining hall were astonished my worldview had never before included artichoke leaves and heart. After all, the University was only an hour away from the artichoke capital of the world, Watsonville, where the motto for the annual artichoke festival was “Thistle Be Fun!”

My frame of reference growing up on a farm was that thistle-looking plants were noxious weeds and needed to be chopped down before going to seed and reproducing even more noxious weeds. This spiny looking bud that was about to bloom a purple thistle flower looked highly suspicious to me and not to be trusted.

But then someone showed me how to peel off a leaf, dip the base in mayonnaise or lemon garlic butter and scrape off the soft part with my teeth. 

Noxious? Not even close. 
Absolutely delicious! 
Prickly protects the tasty.

The circumferential peeling of leaves one by one leads deeper to softer petals and fewer prickles, with the flavor becoming less subtle and more distinct. Once the leaves are all off, there lies uncovered at the base a heart to be scooped out.  The round meaty heart is the point of all this effort. 

It is the gold in the buried treasure chest, the pot at the end of the rainbow. It takes work to reach it, but it never disappoints.

How to mentally get past the plainness and prickles? 
How to recognize what appears so undesirable as something to preserve and nurture?  

There are so many times in my day I walk right past such people or opportunities as not worth the trouble.  Sometimes I myself am the one with the prickles, protective as they seem to me yet announcing caution to others, not to be trusted.

How could anyone know the tender heart that dwells within unless we gently, graciously, gratefully peel the prickles away?

Let Us Gather a Vase of Flowers

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Master, how serene
Are all the hours
We waste
If, as we waste them,
We place them in a vase
Like flowers.

There are no sorrows
In our lives
Nor joys either.
Let us learn then,
Innocent sages,
Not to live life,

But to pass through it,
Tranquil, serene,
Taking children
As our teachers,
Eyes full
Of Nature . . .

Beside a river,
Beside a road,
Wherever we are,
Living life
With the same
Light ease.

Let us gather flowers.
Let us bathe our hands
In the calm rivers,
And from them
Learn their calm.

[12 June, 1914]
~Fernando Pessoa from “Ode 1” translated from Portuguese by Margaret Jull Costa & Patricio Ferrari

How fresh, oh Lord, how sweet and clean 
Are thy returns! even as the flowers in spring; 
To which, besides their own demean, 
The late-past frosts tributes of pleasure bring. 
Grief melts away 
Like snow in May,
As if there were no such cold thing. 

Who would have thought my shriveled heart 
Could have recovered greenness? It was gone 
  Quite underground; as flowers depart 
To see their mother-root, when they have blown, 
Where they together 
All the hard weather
Dead to the world, keep house unknown. 

 These are thy wonders, Lord of power, 
Killing and quickening, bringing down to hell 
And up to heaven in an hour; 
Making a chiming of a passing-bell. 
We say amiss 
This or that is: 
Thy word is all, if we could spell. 

         Oh that I once past changing were, 
Fast in thy Paradise, where no flower can wither! 
Many a spring I shoot up fair, 
Offering at heaven, growing and groaning thither; 
Nor doth my flower 
Want a spring shower, 
My sins and I joining together. 

But while I grow in a straight line, 
Still upwards bent, as if heaven were mine own, 
Thy anger comes, and I decline: 
What frost to that? what pole is not the zone 
Where all things burn, 
When thou dost turn, 
And the least frown of thine is shown? 

And now in age I bud again, 
After so many deaths I live and write; 
I once more smell the dew and rain, 
And relish versing. Oh, my only light, 
It cannot be 
That I am he 
On whom thy tempests fell all night. 

These are thy wonders, Lord of love, 
To make us see we are but flowers that glide; 
Which when we once can find and prove, 
Thou hast a garden for us where to bide; 
Who would be more, 
Swelling through store, 
Forfeit their Paradise by their pride.
~George Herbert “The Flower”

There are days we live
as if death were nowhere
in the background; from joy
to joy to joy, from wing to wing,
from blossom to blossom to
impossible blossom, to sweet impossible blossom.
~Li-Young Lee from “From Blossoms”

Our small church has a couple of gracious and kind gardeners who share the produce from their yards and fields each week to provide a fresh bouquet to sit on the table in front of our humble wooden pulpit.

It is a special treat to walk into church and see what they brought to the altar to share with us all on Sunday morning. I keep a photo album of these very unique Sunday “pulpit posies” our keepers of gardens share.

Why are these arrangements special?
After all, almost every church displays a floral arrangement every Sunday.

These are special as many of these flowers are seeded, watered, fertilized and nurtured by one of our own, grown with love and caring, just as God cares for each of His children.

These are special as some are considered simple weeds, and are gleaned from ditches and hedges. They are part of God’s creation and have a wild beauty that can be as breathtaking as a hothouse orchid.

These are special because they often go home with a congregant or visitor who will enjoy their loveliness for many more days, as if they represent the manifestation of God’s Word itself.

Some of us are dahlias, zinnias and roses.
Some of us are rare gardenias and orchids.
Most of us are dandelions, sagebrush, Queen Anne’s lace,
fireweed, burdock, and daisies thriving
in the crevasses, ditches and hedgerows of life.

No matter which roots we sprout from, or where, we are the wonders of our loving gardening God. He created us to take care of His creation.

Each week, we bud afresh for Him.