Stand still. The trees ahead and bushes beside you Are not lost. Wherever you are is called Here, And you must treat it as a powerful stranger, Must ask permission to know it and be known. The forest breathes. Listen. It answers, I have made this place around you. If you leave it, you may come back again, saying Here. No two trees are the same to Raven. No two branches are the same to Wren. If what a tree or a bush does is lost on you, You are surely lost. Stand still. The forest knows Where you are. You must let it find you. ~David Wagoner “Lost”
Our grandchildren — born in Tokyo, adapting to a rural life here — bring within them the serenity of the gardens they visited there, finding respite from worldly worries and sorrows.
We remind them to love such stillness: there is rest after busyness, there is light beyond darkness, there is peace amid chaos, there are smiles after tears, there is quiet within noisiness, there is grace and mercy forever…
…as we who are older give way to the new.
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Day after day, day after still day, The summer has begun to pass away. Starlings at twilight fly clustered and call, And branches bend, and leaves begin to fall. The meadow and the orchard grass are mown, And the meadowlark’s house is cut down.
The little lantern bugs have doused their fires, The swallows sit in rows along the wires. Berry and grape appear among the flowers Tangled against the wall in secret bowers, And cricket now begins to hum the hours Remaining to the passion’s slow procession Down from the high place and the golden session Wherein the sun was sacrificed for us. A failing light, no longer numinous, Now frames the long and solemn afternoons Where butterflies regret their closed cocoons. We reach the place unripe, and made to know As with a sudden knowledge that we go Away forever, all hope of return Cut off, hearing the crackle of the burn- ing blade behind us, and the terminal sound Of apples dropping on the dry ground. ~Howard Nemerov “Summer’s Elegy” from Collected Poems
As far as I can see this autumn haze That spreading in the evening air both ways, Makes the new moon look anything but new, And pours the elm-tree meadow full of blue, Is all the smoke from one poor house alone With but one chimney it can call its own; So close it will not light an early light, Keeping its life so close and out of sight No one for hours has set a foot outdoors So much as to take care of evening chores. The inmates may be lonely women-folk. I want to tell them that with all this smoke They prudently are spinning their cocoon And anchoring it to an earth and moon From which no winter gale can hope to blow it,— Spinning their own cocoon did they but know it. ~Robert Frost “The Cocoon”
The summer ends, and it is time To face another way. Our theme Reversed, we harvest the last row To store against the cold, undo The garden that will be undone. We grieve under the weakened sun To see all earth’s green fountains dried, And fallen all the works of light. You do not speak, and I regret This downfall of the good we sought As though the fault were mine. I bring The plow to turn the shattering Leaves and bent stems into the dark, From which they may return. At work, I see you leaving our bright land, The last cut flowers in your hand. ~Wendell Berry “The Summer Ends” from A Timbered Choir.
I too regret the closed cocoon, so seemingly safe at the time — once launched before being ready, there is no returning.
In this fading, failing light, I feel undone, weepy at harvest, gathering urgently, not wanting anything to go to waste, trying to memorialize it all as it changes.
I part again from you, Summer – your gifts seemed endless until you yourself ended – a reminder that someday, so must I.
photo by Bob Tjoelker
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Thereis something about the outside of a horse that is good for the inside of a man… ~Long time equestrian wisdom attributed to many famous riders
Twenty-five years ago today, two days before the world changed forever, I helped organize a gathering of Haflinger horse owners from western Canada and the United States in our nearby town of Lynden, Washington. We enjoyed an annual meet-up at the local fairgrounds to enjoy our horses together for a few days doing breed demonstrations for the public, riding, jumping, dressage, driving in teams, vaulting – a little of everything with our versatile horses.
We received permission from Lynden City Hall to have a Haflinger parade on a quiet Sunday morning while local folks were worshipping in the many churches in town. We wanted to be sure to begin from the fairgrounds after services had started, do a two mile route through town and back to the fairgrounds before the traffic increased later.
It was a remarkable sunny morning of over ninety Haflingers and their people – some riding, driving, or leading their horses — all enjoying the quiet peace of a Sabbath morning in a friendly little town. Some of the owners and their horses had been in local parades in their home towns, but none had the experience of being an “all Haflingers” troop through a downtown.
It all went smoothly without a hitch. Well, actually there were several “hitches” in the parade: carts and wagons being pulled by our golden friends.
Everyone returned safely home before September 11, 2001. Life hasn’t felt as peaceful or calm in the same way ever since. This 2001 Haflinger parade was the one and only time it happened in our part of the world.
This is to remember those few days we spent together — the insides of us enjoying the outsides of our Haflingers.
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I will wait here in the fields to see how well the rain brings on the grass. In the labor of the fields longer than a man’s life I am at home. Don’t come with me. You stay home too.
I will be standing in the woods where the old trees move only with the wind then with the gravity. In the stillness of the trees I am at home. Don’t come with me. You stay home too. ~Wendell Berry “Stay Home” from Collected Poems
A steady silver rain pours out over the gray world on an ordinary morning. Drenching for hours the field, wild flowers, soil and all the birds off somewhere dry in hidden nests, keeping quiet.
And you, too: keep quiet for a few hours, let your thoughts fizz like that silver sheen, shushshushshushshush, ceaseless sheet of velvet, of plenty. Enough to hear, to drink, to soak in, though you hadn’t known how dry you were. ~Joanne Esser “What You Need: (It Doesn’t Have to Be Lightning)” from Nothing is Stationary
Yesterday morning, our county was awakened shortly after 6AM with several thunder crashes after lightning bolts flashed and illuminated our dark bedroom.
Thunder storms are unusual in the Pacific Northwest; even more unusual is an early morning storm with so much drama and subsequent dumping rain.
I was fortunate to be sheltering inside a comfortable home with a good roof — not sitting in a tree.
I was happy,watching it happen without it happening to me.
Then I looked out my kitchen window, where a drenched pine siskin sat trembling on our bird feeder, her breakfast interrupted by the downpour. No doubt she would much rather have been at home quietly sitting in her favorite tree, but as she was unable to fly so soaked by the heavy torrent, she huddled under the little cover of the feeder, trying to ride it out.
Watching her cope with her wet plumage from an unplanned bird bath, I realized I hadn’t known how dry I was.
After twenty minutes, the storm was all over as the sun began peeking out from behind roiling clouds. She shook off the excess drops from her feathers, picked out a few more seeds before launching on her way to parts unknown.
I sat and finished my toast, musing at our brief breakfast alongside one another, each safe under temporary shelter. In her own way, she let me know: In the stillness of the trees I am at home. Don’t come with me. You stay home too.
And so I shall…
Lyrics: We all need love and shelter A place where we let go and rest To live secure with one another To be ourselves, not somebody else
Everybody needs respect and dignity Everybody needs love, real love
We all need to know we’re worthy That we are treasure to our core We can tell the truth about our trauma To be believed so we can be restored
Everybody needs love; everybody knows love Is what it takes to make a life So everybody breathe love; everyone receive love It’s how we heal and make things right
We all need confirmation To know that we are seen and heard To live our lives out in freedom Then all our flags of hope can be unfurled
We all need a place to shelter
Lyrics: Whisper truth over me I’m loved eternally Never am I alone, you’re here with me I don’t have to be afraid Faithfulness doesn’t change Unshakable terra firm underneath my need
I wanna know this love A love that never dies For when I trust I find Your love sustains my life
Whisper grace over me I don’t need to earn your peace Help me surrender now as you carry me When shadows are lengthening I’m sheltered beneath your wings Compassionate arms of love are still underneath
I wanna know this love A love that never dies For when I trust I find Your love sustains my life
I wanna know this love A love that never dies For when I trust I’ll find Your love sustains my life
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And when he got into the boat, his disciples followed him. A gale arose on the lake, so great that the boat was being swamped by the waves; but he was asleep. And they went and woke him up, saying, ‘Lord, save us! We are perishing!’
And he said to them, ‘Why are you afraid, you of little faith?’ Then he got up and rebuked the winds and the sea; and there was a dead calm.
They were amazed, saying, ‘What sort of man is this, that even the winds and the sea obey him?’ Matthew 8:23-27
Sweet Jesus, talking his melancholy madness, stood up in the boat and the sea lay down,
silky and sorry. So everybody was saved that night… Nobody knows what the soul is.
It comes and goes like the wind over the water — sometimes, for days, you don’t think of it.
Maybe, after the sermon, after the multitude was fed, one or two of them felt the soul slip forth
like a tremor of pure sunlight before exhaustion, that wants to swallow everything, gripped their bones and left them
miserable and sleepy, as they are now, forgetting how the wind tore at the sails before he rose and talked to it —
tender and luminous and demanding as he always was — a thousand times more frightening than the killer storm. ~Mary Oliver from “Maybe”
We sleep through our diminishing days even more than we sleep through the nights, unfocused on each passing moment which never is to come again.
Those moments crash to shore, then pull back to be lost forever.
There is a blindness in us all about what is inevitably coming, how we tumble through the years like waves, overcome by their passage, helpless to stop them.
Yet He is tender and luminous and demanding He speaks to us with the same words as He addresses the relentless stormy destructive sea.
Peace be still!
And so we obey in our helplessness, forgiven, saved by grace, so silky and sorry.
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To look into the eye of a horse is to see a reflection of yourself that you might’ve forgotten. No grief was big enough not to be washed clean in your horse’s eye. ~Gillian Mears from Foal’s Bread
(i do not know what it is about you that closes and opens; only something in me understands
…whenever you mark a horse, or a dog, with a peculiarly mild, calm, deep-seated eye, be sure he is an Aristotle or a Kant, tranquilly speculating upon the mysteries in man. No philosophers so thoroughly comprehend us as dogs and horses. They see through us at a glance. But there is a touch of divinity …. and a special halo about a horse… ~Herman Melville from Redburn: His First Voyage
Two whistles, one for each, and familiar sounds draw close in darkness— cadence of hoof on hardened bottomland, twinned blowing of air through nostrils curious, flared. They come deepened and muscular movements conjured out of sleep: each small noise and scent heavy with earth, simple beyond communion…
…and in the night, their mares’ eyes shine, reflecting stars, the entire, outer light of the world here. ~Jane Hirschfield from “After Work”
There is a moment after you move your eye away when you forget where you are because you’ve been living, it seems, somewhere else, in the silence of the night sky.
You’ve stopped being here in the world. You’re in a different place, a place where human life has no meaning.
You’re not a creature in a body. You exist as the stars exist, participating in their stillness, their immensity. ~Louise Glück from “Telescope” in Averno
It’s tempting to fall headfirst into each eye’s fathomless well – These eyes rivet me as they search my own: a retinal magnet drawing me into such incalculable depths.
Yet I am merely reflected like starlight; only dancing on this shining mirrored surface when I long to dive deep to understand what they see in me: so lost I long to be found.
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
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”
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The first week of August hangs at the very top of summer, the top of the live-long year, like the highest seat of a Ferris wheel when it pauses in its turning.
The weeks that come before are only a climb from balmy spring, and those that follow a drop to the chill of autumn, but the first week of August is motionless, and hot.
It is curiously silent, too, with blank white dawns and glaring noons, and sunsets smeared with too much color. ~Natalie Babbitt from Tuck Everlasting
After an early summer of moderate temperatures and occasional rains, we’re adjusting to temperatures in the nineties. No one asked me if enduring heat, humidity, and smoky skies was a reasonable way to conclude the first week of August.
So I sit silently rocking and sweating in the highest vantage point of this summer’s ferris wheel ride so far, hanging breathlessly mid-air, a brief pause in the endless cycle of sunny days.
Having just arrived at the top, I venture to look down, knowing I am simply along for the ride, and Someone else is at the controls. I might as well enjoy the view of all that is behind, alongside and in front of me, but especially what is below, holding me up in thin air.
All too quickly will come the rapid descent into autumn, my stomach leaping into my chest with the lurch forward into the unknown. As the climb to get here took so long, I am not quite ready for this inevitable drop back into the chill.
Hot or not, it’s best to celebrate August for all it’s splashiness and shining illumination necessitating sunglasses. At least I’m swinging in what little breeze there is, endeavoring to capture this moment, and every moment, forever.
Lyrics from poem by James Agee: Sure on this shining night Of starmade shadows round Kindness must watch for me This side the ground On this shining night This shining night
Sure on this shining night Of starmade shadows round Kindness must watch for me This side the ground On this shining night This shining night
The late year lies down the north All is healed, all is health High summer holds the earth Hearts all whole
The late year lies down the north All is healed, all is health High summer holds the earth Hearts all whole
Sure on this shining night Sure on this shining night
Sure on this shining night I weep for wonder Wandering far alone Of shadows on the stars
Sure on this shining night Of starmade shadows round Kindness must watch for me This side the ground
Oh, this shining night This shining night The shining night Sure on this shining night
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I have never been fishing on the Susquehanna or on any river for that matter to be perfectly honest.
Not in July or any month have I had the pleasure — if it is a pleasure — of fishing on the Susquehanna.
I am more likely to be found in a quiet room like this one — a painting of a woman on the wall, a bowl of tangerines on the table — trying to manufacture the sensation of fishing on the Susquehanna.
There is little doubt that others have been fishing on the Susquehanna,
rowing upstream in a wooden boat, sliding the oars under the water then raising them to drip in the light. But the nearest I have ever come to fishing on the Susquehanna was one afternoon in a museum in Philadelphia,
when I balanced a little egg of time in front of a painting in which that river curled around a bend
under a blue cloud-ruffled sky, dense trees along the banks, and a fellow with a red bandana
sitting in a small, green flat-bottom boat holding the thin whip of a pole.
That is something I am unlikely ever to do, I remember saying to myself and the person next to me.
Then I blinked and moved on to other American scenes of haystacks, water whitening over rocks,
even one of a brown hare who seemed so wired with alertness I imagined him springing right out of the frame. ~Billy Collins Fishing On The Susquehanna In July
The difficulty to think at the end of day, When the shapeless shadow covers the sun And nothing is left except light on your fur—
….and August the most peaceful month.
To be, in the grass, in the peacefullest time, And to feel that the light is a rabbit-light In which everything is meant for you And nothing need be explained;
I live a quiet life in a quiet place. There are many experiences not on my bucket list that I’m simply content to just imagine others doing.
I’m not a rock climber or a zip liner nor willing to jump out of an airplane. I won’t ride a horse over a four foot jump nor race one around a track. Not for me waterskis or unicycles or motorcycles.
I’m grateful there are adventurers who seek out the extremes of life so the rest of us can admire their courage and applaud their explorations.
My imagination is powerful enough, thanks to the words and pictures of others – sometimes too vivid.
I contentedly explore the corners of my quiet places, both inside and outside, to see what I can build from what’s here.
When the light is just right, what I see in my mind seems ready to spring right out of the frame.
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At dusk, everything blurs and softens. From here out over the long valley, the fields and hills pull up the first slight sheets of evening, as, over the next hour, heavier, darker ones will follow.
Quieted roads, predictable deer browsing in a neighbor’s field, another’s herd of heifers, the kitchen lights starting in many windows. On horseback I take it in, neither visitor nor intruder, but kin passing, closer and closer to night, its cold streams rising in the sugarbush and hollow.
Half-aloud, I say to the horse, or myself, or whoever: let fire not come to this house, nor that barn, nor lightning strike the cattle. Let dogs not gain the gravid doe, let the lights of the rooms convey what they seem to.
And who is to say it is useless or foolish to ride out in the falling light alone, wishing, or praying, for particular good to particular beings, on one small road in a huge world?
The horse bears me along, like grace, making me better than what I am, and what I think or say or see is whole in these moments, is neither small nor broken. For up, out of the inscrutable earth, have come my body and the separate body of the mare: flawed and aching and wronged. Who then is better made to say be well, be glad,
or who to long that we, as one, might course over the entire valley, over all valleys, as a bird in a great embrace of flight, who presses against her breast, in grief and tenderness, the whole weeping body of the world? ~ Linda McCarriston, “Riding Out at Evening” fromTalking Soft Dutch
photo by Emily Vander Haak
On this, my 72nd birthday, I pray for this troubled world, reminding myself: be well, be glad…
I’m still here by the grace of God who carries not just me on His back through each day, but all earthly burdens.
I pray like a bird embracing the air which lifts its wings, tenderly holding to its breast a soaring freedom to transcend the weeping world.
I have seen so much goodness over 72 years, sometimes through tears of sorrow. I know there will be more joy and sadness before I’m done.
I am grateful, so very grateful to have lived all these years seeing tears shed, then dried, learning how love heals, knowing the only thing to last forever is God’s covenant promise to always carry us home.
photo by Brandon Dielemanphoto by Brandon Dieleman
video by Peter Tamminga
Whilst the world is weeping, let us do our bit. We have the time to sympathise, to listen and to sit. No needless thoughts, of the things we cannot do. But appreciate all the good bits and look at them anew.
The warmth and comfort of our homes, the food we have to eat. The family and friends we have, although we cannot meet. The village that we live in, and the community we share. So precious to us right now, so sit and think and care.
Whilst the world is full of sadness, anxiety and pain, It’s hard to imagine our lives ever carefree again. But nothing lasts forever, the clouds will always clear. Let’s heal the world with love, so the sunshine can appear. ~Sandra Rickman
Lyrics: Drop, drop, slow tears, and bathe those beauteous feet, which brought from heaven the news and Prince of Peace. Cease not, wet eyes, his mercies to entreat; to cry for vengeance sin doth never cease. In your deep floods drown all my faults and fears; nor let his eye see sin, but through my tears.
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