A curious Cloud surprised the Sky, ‘Twas like a sheet with Horns; The sheet was Blue — The Antlers Gray — It almost touched the Lawns.
So low it leaned — then statelier drew — And trailed like robes away, A Queen adown a satin aisle Had not the majesty. ~Emily Dickinson
The sky is full of clouds to-day, And idly, to and fro, Like sheep across the pasture, they Across the heavens go. I hear the wind with merry noise Around the housetops sweep, And dream it is the shepherd boys,— They’re driving home their sheep.
The clouds move faster now; and see! The west is red and gold. Each sheep seems hastening to be The first within the fold. I watch them hurry on until The blue is clear and deep, And dream that far beyond the hill The shepherds fold their sheep.
Then in the sky the trembling stars Like little flowers shine out, While Night puts up the shadow bars, And darkness falls about. ~Frank Dempster Sherman “Clouds”
White sheep, white sheep, On a blue hill, When the wind stops, You all stand still. When the wind blows, You walk away slow. White sheep, white sheep, Where do you go? ~Christina Rossetti “Clouds”
The afternoon sky becomes a chenille bedspread, covering over a dying autumn landscape.
If only we could throw such a comforter over our messy human lives.
We all might sleep a bit better…
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Begin the song exactly where you are, Remain within the world of which you’re made. Call nothing common in the earth or air, Accept it all and let it be for good.
Start with the very breath you breathe in now, This moment’s pulse, this rhythm in your blood And listen to it, ringing soft and low. Stay with the music, words will come in time.
Slow down your breathing. Keep it deep and slow. Become an open singing-bowl, whose chime Is richness rising out of emptiness, And timelessness resounding into time.
In the center of my chest, a kindling there in the hollow, as if a match had just been struck, or the blinds snapped up on a sealed room, gold suffusing the air, and through the wide windows, a solstice unfolding, mine for the lengthening days. ~Andrea Potts “On Reading John Donne for the First Time” from Her Joy Becomes
I will not forget, dear harvest moon, to keep you as my singing bowl where I can find your song months from now, even when your reflected light leaks out to tangle up in the weary trees of autumn.
Once the leaves fall, you illuminate even the most humble branches in their embarrassed nakedness.
Call nothing common in the earth or air, Accept it all and let it be for good.
When I too need your warm light in the center of my hollowed chest, I’ll know exactly where to find you, as you sing lullabies, waiting for me to empty.
I’ll not forget you, because you never forget to keep looking for me.
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We are walking with the month To a quiet place. See, only here and there the gentians stand! Tonight the homing loon Will fly across the moon, Over the tired land. We were the idlers and the sowers, The watchers in the sun, The harvesters who laid away the grain. Now there’s a sign in every vacant tree, Now there’s a hint in every stubble field, Something we must not forget When the blossoms fly again. Give me your hand!
There were too many promises in June. Human-tinted buds of spring Told only half the truth. The withering leaf beneath our feet, That wrinkled apple overhead, Say more than vital boughs have said When we went walking In this growing place. There is something in this hour More honest than a flower Or laughter from a sunny face. ~Scudder Middleton “Song in the Key of Autumn”
I walk through the scant remainder of September wistful~~ a witness to the harvest of unfulfilled spring promises.
Watching sunlit days fade to blustery rain-filled nights.
I knew the growing season wouldn’t last. I knew the time to lie fallow would come.
Give me your hand. We’ll walk through this darkening time together, waiting, watching, for, once more, the promises of spring.
Winslow Homer – Veteran in a New Field, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City
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Teach me to walk with tender feet, as the wild ones do. Let me be the cinder-glow of the fox in her burrow, wreathed around the honey-spark fur of her sleeping kits.
Let me be the shaded pools of the doe’s eyes in winter, when the snow falls, when the stars lean down to listen, when the world is darker and softer than rain.
Let me be the swallow after flight, when she is perched upon the branch where the petals of the lilacs used to be, and she is just still, and quiet, her downy head inclined, as though she is praying for their return. ~Kimberly Beck “Tender Feet”
As the weather changes, softening in the mists of autumn, I walk each step with careful feet, my tender heart singing songs in the rain. I pray for peace in this troubled land, for protection from harm until spring comes again.
May God grant a gentle night’s sleep for all His creatures.
video by Harry Rodenberger
Lyrics for Aragorn’s Sleepsong: Lay down your head and I’ll sing you a lullaby Back to the years of loo-li lai-lay And I’ll sing you to sleep and I’ll sing you tomorrow
Bless you with love for the road that you go May you sail far to the far fields of fortune With diamonds and pearls at your head and your feet And may you need never to banish misfortune
May you find kindness in all that you meet May there always be angels to watch over you To guide you each step of the way To guard you and keep you safe from all harm Loo-li, loo-li, lai-lay
May you bring love and may you bring happiness Be loved in return to the end of your days Now fall off to sleep, I’m not meaning to keep you I’ll just sit for a while and sing loo-li, lai-lay
May there always be angels to watch over you To guide you each step of the way To guard you and keep you safe from all harm Loo-li, loo-li, lai-lay
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I went out to cut a last batch of zinnias this morning from the back fencerow and got my shanks chilled for sure: furrowy dark gray clouds with separating fringes of blue sky-grass: and the dew
beaded up heavier than the left-overs of the rain: in the zinnias, in each of two, a bumblebee stirring in slow motion. Trying to unwind the webbed drug of cold, buzzing occasionally but
with a dry rattle: bees die with the burnt honey at their mouths, at least: the fact’s established: it is not summer now and the simmering buzz is out of heat: the zucchini blossoms falling show squash
overgreen with stunted growth: the snapdragons have suckered down into a blossom or so: we passed into dark last week the even mark of day and night and what we hoped would stay we yield to change. ~A.R. Ammons “Equinox” from Complete Poems
I yield now to the heaviness of transition from summer to autumn – the soaking morning fog, with dew clinging like teardrops, a chill in the air means I sweater-wrap my days.
It is time for change, reluctant as I may be; both day and night now compete equally for my time and each will win.
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I want to memorize it all before it changes: the shift of sun from north to south barely balances on our east- west road at equinox.
The flow of geese overhead, honking while waving farewell, the hawks’ screams in the firs, dragonflies trapped in the barn light fixtures several generations of coyotes hollering at dusk.
The pond quiets with cooler nights, hair thickens on horses, cats and dogs, dying back of the garden vines reveals what lies unharvested beneath.
And so we part again, Summer – your gifts were endless until you now have parted ways.
I sit silenced, brooding, waiting for what comes next.
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Summer is over, the old cow said, And they’ll shut me up in a draughty shed To milk me by lamplight in the cold, But I won’t give much for I am old. It’s long ago that I came here Gay and slim as a woodland deer; It’s long ago that I heard the roar Of Smith’s white bull by the sycamore. And now there are bones where my flesh should be; My backbone sags like an old roof tree, And an apple snatched in a moment’s frolic Is just so many days of colic.
I’m neither a Jersey nor Holstein now But only a faded sort of cow. My calves are veal and I had as lief That I could lay me down as beef; Somehow, they always kill by halves, — Why not take me when they take my calves? Birch turns yellow and sumac red, I’ve seen this all before, she said, I’m tired of the field and tired of the shed. There’s no more grass, there’s no more clover; Summer is over, summer is over. ~Robert Hillyer “Moo!”
Something inspires the only cow of late To make no more of a wall than an open gate, And think no more of wall-builders than fools. Her face is flecked with pomace and she drools A cider syrup. Having tasted fruit, She scorns a pasture withering to the root. She runs from tree to tree where lie and sweeten The windfalls spiked with stubble and worm-eaten. She leaves them bitten when she has to fly. She bellows on a knoll against the sky. Her udder shrivels and the milk goes dry. ~Robert Frost “The Cow in Apple Time”
I have lived among cows, our own and our neighbors’, dairy and beef, most of my life. Given their status as a food source, cows aren’t always granted a long life, but I do envy those who spend much of the year chewing cud outside in pastoral settings.
We’ve owned some aged cows. They can be set in their ways and don’t particularly like a change in routine. They prefer a communal life, bearing calves, surrendering their milk, and ensuring the herd hierarchy is maintained with a minimum of fuss.
I remember my dad curing a cow’s habit of eating apples directly from a tree branch. She had the apple lodged in her esophagus as it had slipped down her throat unchewed, but too large to pass through to her rumen. She was foaming at the mouth, breathing fine, but the apple was a visible lump palpable mid-way down her neck. My dad grabbed a short two by four board and a hammer, placed the board on one side of her neck lump, and with the hammer, hit her neck precisely over the apple, crushing it. She was immediately cured and sauntered over to grab more apples, off the ground rather than the branch.
Cows can experience various health issues, sometimes relating to infections in their udders, but not infrequently, trouble with their hooves. They can get abscesses which are quite painful until emptied, as well as sharp rocks or gravel wedged into their foot. This sometimes necessitates hoof work done by a specialist who visits dairy farms on a regular basis.
I confess I (along with a million or so other folks) spend an inordinate amount of time watching YouTube channels of cow hoof trimming. I have no desire to do the job myself, but restoring a limping cow to a comfortably walking cow is a skill that must be very gratifying.
As an aging female myself, I know all about aches and pains. I too feel the sadness of summer coming to an end, when the grass and clover grows sparse in the field, and when chilly nights are best spent in the shelter of the barn.
But I’m not yet ready to give up on this sweet pastoral life. There are still some days left, and apples to pick up off the ground, for this fading old cow…
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For seasons the walled meadow south of the house built of its stone grows up in shepherd’s purse and thistles the weeds share April as a secret finches disguised as summer earth click the drying seeds mice run over rags of parchment in August the hare keeps looking up remembering a hidden joy fills the songs of the cicadas
two days’ rain wakes the green in the pastures crows agree and hawks shriek with naked voices on all sides the dark oak woods leap up and shine the long stony meadow is plowed at last and lies all day bare I consider life after life as treasures oh it is the autumn light
that brings everything back in one hand the light again of beginnings the amber appearing as amber ~ W. S. Merwin, “September Plowing” from Flower & Hand
photo by Joel De Waard
When you are already here you appear to be only a name that tells of you whether you are present or not
and for now it seems as though you are still summer still the high familiar endless summer yet with a glint of bronze in the chill mornings and the late yellow petals of the mullein fluttering on the stalks that lean over their broken shadows across the cracked ground
but they all know that you have come the seed heads of the sage the whispering birds with nowhere to hide you to keep you for later
you who fly with them
you who are neither before nor after you who arrive with blue plums that have fallen through the night
Now that it has rained a bit, the light of September is a filtered, more gentle illumination than we have experienced for the past several months of dry summer glare.
It is more lambent: a soft radiance that simply glows at certain times of the day when the angle of the sun is just right, and the clouds are in position to soften and cushion the luminence.
It is also liminal: it is neither before or after, on the threshold between seasons when there is both promise and caution in the air.
Sometimes I think I can breathe in light like this, if not through my lungs, then through my eyes.
It is a temptation to bottle it up with a stopper somehow, stow it away hidden in a back cupboard. Then I can bring it out on the darkest days, pour a bit into a glass, and imbibe.
But for now, I fill myself full to the brim. And my only means of preservation is with a camera and a few words.
So I share it now with all of you to tuck away for a future day. Perhaps you too will be thirsty for a lambent light.
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A second crop of hay lies cut and turned. Five gleaming crows search and peck between the rows. They make a low, companionable squawk, and like midwives and undertakers possess a weird authority.
Crickets leap from the stubble, parting before me like the Red Sea. The garden sprawls and spoils.
Cloud shadows rush over drying hay, fences, dusty lane, and railroad ravine. The first yellowing fronds of goldenrod brighten the margins of the woods.
Schoolbooks, carpools, pleated skirts; water, silver-still, and a vee of geese.
*
The cicada’s dry monotony breaks over me. The days are bright and free, bright and free.
Then why did I cry today for an hour, with my whole body, the way babies cry?
*
A white, indifferent morning sky, and a crow, hectoring from its nest high in the hemlock, a nest as big as a laundry basket …
In my childhood I stood under a dripping oak, while autumnal fog eddied around my feet, waiting for the school bus with a dread that took my breath away.
The damp dirt road gave off this same complex organic scent. I had the new books—words, numbers, and operations with numbers I did not comprehend—and crayons, unspoiled by use, in a blue canvas satchel with red leather straps.
Spruce, inadequate, and alien I stood at the side of the road. It was the only life I had. ~Jane Kenyon from “Three Songs at the End of Summer”
Yesterday, my son taught me the sign for lockdown— different than locking a door, or the shutdown we invented at the start of the pandemic. Little fistfuls of locks swept quickly between us, a sign designed especially for school.
My son spent his first years a different kind of locked up—an orphanage in Bangkok, where he didn’t speak and they couldn’t sign. He came home, age four, silent. We thought being here could open doors. It has, of course. He’s learned so much at the deaf school; the speech therapist calls it a Language Explosion. I keep lists of the words he’s gathered: vanilla, buckle, castle, stay. And lockdown. He absorbs it like the rest. Now the schools he builds with Magna-Tiles have lockdowns. I worry in trying to give him keys, we’ve only changed the locks.
To lock down a deaf school, we use a special strobe. When it flashes, we flip switches and sign through darkness. The children know to stay beneath the windows. Every five minutes a robot texts: “Shelter in place is still in effect. Please await further instructions.” Then we pull the fire alarm, a tactical move to unsettle the shooter. Hearing people can’t think with noise like that. A piercing thing we don’t detect, to cover the sounds we make, the sounds we don’t know we’re making. ~Sara Nović “Lockdown at the School for the Deaf”
The first day back to school now isn’t always the day after Labor Day as it was when I was growing up. Some students have been in classes for a couple weeks already, others started a few days ago to ease into the transition more gently.
Some return to the routine this morning – school buses roar past our farm brimming with eager young faces and stuffed back packs amid a combination of excitement and anxiety.
I remember well that foreboding that accompanied a return to school — the strict schedule, the inflexible rules and the often harsh adjustment of social hierarchies and friend groups. Even as a good learner and obedient student, I was a square peg being pushed into a round hole when I returned to the classroom. The students who struggled academically and who pushed against the boundaries of rules must have felt even more so. We all felt alien and inadequate to the immense task before us to fit in with one another, allow teachers to structure and open our minds to new thoughts, and to become something and someone more than who we were before.
Growth is so very hard, our stretching so painful, the tug and pull of friendships stressful. And for the last two decades, there is the additional fear of lockdowns and active shooters.
I worked with students on an academic calendar for over 30 years, yet though I’m now retired, I still don’t sleep well in anticipation of all this day means.
So I take a deep breath on a foggy post-Labor Day morning and am immediately taken back to the anxieties and fears of a skinny little girl in a new home-made corduroy jumper and saddle shoes, waiting for the schoolbus on our drippy wooded country road.
She is still me — just buried deeply in the fog of who I became after all those years of schooling, hidden somewhere under all the piled-on layers of learning and growing and hurting and stretching — I do remember her well.
Like every student starting a new adventure today, we could all use a hug.
Lo! I am come to autumn, When all the leaves are gold; Grey hairs and golden leaves cry out The year and I are old.
In youth I sought the prince of men, Captain in cosmic wars, Our Titan, even the weeds would show Defiant, to the stars.
But now a great thing in the street Seems any human nod, Where shift in strange democracy The million masks of God.
In youth I sought the golden flower Hidden in wood or wold, But I am come to autumn, When all the leaves are gold. ~G.K. Chesterton “Gold Leaves”
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A butterfly dancing in the sunlight, A bird singing to his mate, The whispering pines, The restless sea, The gigantic mountains, A stately tree, The rain upon the roof, The sun at early dawn, A boy with rod and hook, The babble of a shady brook, A woman with her smiling babe, A man whose eyes are kind and wise, Youth that is eager and unafraid— When all is said, I do love best A little home where love abides, And where there’s kindness, peace, and rest. ~Scottie McKenzie Frasier “The Things I Love”
When all is said and done, I love best the people who bring kindness, peace and rest to the little house we call home.
It is enough and everything.
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