Category: contentment

Beautiful Changes

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One wading a Fall meadow finds on all sides   
The Queen Anne’s Lace lying like lilies
On water; it glides
So from the walker, it turns
Dry grass to a lake, as the slightest shade of you   
Valleys my mind in fabulous blue Lucernes.

The beautiful changes as a forest is changed   
By a chameleon’s tuning his skin to it;   
As a mantis, arranged
On a green leaf, grows
Into it, makes the leaf leafier, and proves   
Any greenness is deeper than anyone knows.

Your hands hold roses always in a way that says   
They are not only yours; the beautiful changes   
In such kind ways,   
Wishing ever to sunder
Things and things’ selves for a second finding, to lose   
For a moment all that it touches back to wonder.
~Richard Wilbur “The Beautiful Changes”

I am changed again, as I blend into autumn.

We can’t help but be transformed by everything around us, you know.

Beautiful is the dying meadow, the shedding of dry reddened leaves,
the tidal wave of wildflowers nodding goodbye until next summer.

Beauty is beheld with wonder and then lost to the ages. We cannot change what we see, but treasure its transience, as we cherish our own brief moments here.

We hold on lightly, ready to let go when the time comes.
What comes next is beautiful beyond imagining.

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The Light That’s Left Them

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Now’s a good time, before the night comes on,
To praise the loyalty of the vase of flowers
Gracing the parlor table, and the bowl of oranges,
And the book with freckled pages resting on the tablecloth.
To remark how these items aren’t conspiring
To pack their bags and move to a place
Where stillness appears to more advantage.
No plan for a heaven above, beyond, or within,
Whose ever-blooming bushes are rustling
In a sea breeze at this very moment.
These things are focusing all their attention
On holding fast as time washes around them.
The flowers in the vase won’t come again.
The page of the book beside it, the edge turned down,
Will never be read again for the first time.
The light from the window’s angled.
The sun’s moving on. That’s why the people
Who live in the house are missing.
They’re all outside enjoying the light that’s left them.
Lucky for them to find when they return
These silent things just as they were.
Night’s coming on and they haven’t been frightened off.
They haven’t once dreamed of going anywhere.
~Carl Dennis, “Still Life” from Ranking the Wishes

Wendell Berry – Another Day Sabbath Poems

The transformation of objects in space,
or objects in time,
To objects outside either, but tactile, still precise…
It’s always the same problem –
Nothing’s more abstract, more unreal,
than what we actually see.
The job is to make it otherwise.
~Charles Wright from “Basic Dialogue” in Appalachia

Annie Dillard – Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

Let us treasure the Light that is left to us, to dwell outside in its midst as night is coming.

Meanwhile, a still life exists within, unchanging, real, tangible, not going anywhere.

Stillness is always there if we decide to come in as the dark descends.

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One Season Too Many

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The foliage has been losing its freshness
through the month of August,
and here and there a yellow leaf shows itself
like the first gray hair amidst the locks
of a beauty who has seen one season too many.
~Oliver Wendell Holmes from Songs of Many Seasons 1862-1874

I remember a day before I turned 30 when a barber pulled a gray hair from my head and handed it to me.  “Here you go, ” she said,  “this is only the beginning.”

Indeed.  My mother was totally gray by 32 and my hope was to hold onto my mousy brown hair until at least 50.

It didn’t seem possible I could be losing my “freshness” so young as 29, but over the next 41 years, there is an exponential increase in the number of gray (and white!) hairs, and I must face facts.

Ages ago on my 45th birthday, as I was walking down the sidewalk at work, a middle-aged woman stopped me mid-stride and asked me what brand hair coloring I used. I was taken completely off-guard.  All I could respond was that I used no hair coloring other than what God Himself applied. She laughed and said she would have to keep looking then, as she was hoping I could direct her to a hair color that would make her hair look like “champagne” just like mine.  

I floated for three days on that thought alone.

Champagne. So I wasn’t “one season too many” after all. I was “well-aged.”

I sympathize with the not-so-fresh foliage on our farm in late summer. In anticipation of autumn, some of the yellow leaves simply give up and let go, flying in the wind to their final resting place, even in early September.  Others decide to hang on until the bitter end ~yellowing, goldening, reddening and browning in a shimmering kaleidoscope of exhausted pigment.

For now, I am one of those hanging on, quaking at times in the breezes, bedraggled in the drizzle, tattered on the edges, with some age spots here and there. I’m determined to make the best of the gray and am proud of every strand I’ve earned over the years and hope to earn a bunch more before I’m done.

After all…it isn’t really gray. It is champagne, well aged, with bubbles sparkling in the sun.

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Upon the Bough of Morning

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The crust of sleep is broken
Abruptly—
I look drowsily
Through the wide crack.
I do not know whether I see
Three minds, bird-shaped,
Flashing upon the bough of morning;
Or three delicately tinted souls
Butterflying in the sun;
Or three brown-fleshed, husky children
Sprawling hilarious
Over my bed
And me.
~Jeanne D’Orge “Matins” (published in 1917)

This morning I broke through the misty tides of my dreams,
surfacing to cool morning air and prelude of a dawn bird chorus.

Today I wake imagining who I might be from a myriad of dreams…

Sometimes I wake as if once again a young girl,
sun coming through frilly curtains to shower my face with a warming light.

Sometimes I wake as if once again a sleep-thirsty student, hoping to snooze another 15 minutes before class.

Sometimes I wake once again as if a new mother,
dripping and leaking at the sound of my baby’s cries.

Sometimes I wake as if once again a weary farmer, up much of the night with a laboring mare and slow-to-suck foal.

Sometimes I wake as if once again a preoccupied physician, mentally reviewing the night’s phone calls and concerns.

Today I wake as a grandma, wishing my bed would bounce with a pile of birds and butterflies and jubilant children, wishing me good morning and eager to see me up and at ’em.

So who am I?

I was, I am, I will be all those things, as I hang tight to the bough of morning.

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Transfiguring the Trivial

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A sudden light transfigures a trivial thing,
a weather-vane, a wind-mill, a winnowing flail,
the dust in the barn door; a moment,- –
and the thing has vanished, because it was pure effect;
but it leaves a relish behind it,
a longing that the accident may happen again.
~Walter Pater from “The Renaissance”

Man Scything Hay by Todd Reifers
dust motes and insects in the barn

Summer ends now; now, barbarous in beauty, the stooks rise
Around; up above, what wind-walks! what lovely behaviour
Of silk-sack clouds! has wilder, wilful-wavier
Meal-drift moulded ever and melted across skies?

I walk, I lift up, I lift up heart, eyes,
Down all that glory in the heavens to glean our Saviour;
And eyes, heart, what looks, what lips yet give you a
Rapturous love’s greeting of realer, of rounder replies?

And the azurous hung hills are his world-wielding shoulder
Majestic – as a stallion stalwart, very-violet-sweet! –
These things, these things were here and but the beholder
Wanting; which two when they once meet,
The heart rears wings bold and bolder
And hurls for him, O half hurls earth for him off under his feet.
~Gerard Manley Hopkins “Hurrahing in Harvest”

The accident of light does happen,
again and again,
but when I least expect it. 

I need to be ready for it; in a blink, it can be gone. 

Yet in that moment,
everything is changed and transformed forever. 

The thing itself,
trivial and transient becomes something other, 
merely because of how it is illuminated. 

And so am I, trivial and transient,
lit from outside myself, winnowed and
transfigured by a love and sacrifice
that I can never deserve.

It was and is no accident.

My heart is readies for earth to be hurled to heaven’s Light.

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And So It Goes…

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Toward the end of August I begin to dream about fall, how
this place will empty of people, the air will get cold and
leaves begin to turn. Everything will quiet down, everything
will become a skeleton of its summer self. Toward

the end of August I get nostalgic for what’s to come, for
that quiet time, time alone, peace and stillness, calm, all
those things the summer doesn’t have. The woodshed is
already full, the kindling’s in, the last of the garden soon

will be harvested, and then there will be nothing left to do
but watch fall play itself out, the earth freeze, winter come.
~David Budbill “Toward the End of August”

As the calendar page flips to September this morning, I feel sad for what we leave behind, while knowing what is coming.

Summer is filled with so much overwhelming activity due to 18 hours of daylight accompanying weeks of unending sunny weather resulting in never-enough-sleep. Waking on a summer morning is brim full with possibilities: there are places to go, people who visit, new things to explore and of course, a garden and orchard bearing and fruiting out of control.

As early September days usher us toward autumn, our older grandchildren will adjust to a more predictable routine of school days, ripe with learning opportunities. Great teachers will lead them into vast new worlds of knowledge.

My teacher friend Bonnie coordinates an innovative introduction to fifth grade by asking her students, with some parental assistance, to make (from scratch) their own personalized school desks that will go home with them at the end of the school year. These students create their own learning center with both brains and hands, applying wood-burned and painted designs, with inspirational quotes for daily encouragement. Their desks represent a solid reminder of what they leave behind each year, while striving to become something new.

And so it goes, year after year.

I am wistful about September’s quiet commencement despite no school or job to return to. There is a cool freshness in the air as breezes begin to pluck and toss a few drying leaves from the trees. 

I watch the days play themselves out. No longer do I feel I must direct each moment. 

And so it goes, and so it goes.
And you are the only one who knows.

Mrs. Bonnie Patterson’s fifth graders’ handmade desks
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Growing a Summer Miracle

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You must grow your own miracles.

Special has been hormoned
and hardened against the bump
and bruise. Pretty in the produce
aisle, but pithless and pitiful.

I prefer a nude stocking sling
for the heft, a slow blush,
not the red-on-arrival rouge
needled in the green-to-go.

In a hot June—the prize, only
once a year, the furrowed fruit
weighs down its stems for clipping
in your open hand, quite full
of tender skin.

Take care carrying
them to the kitchen, prepare
the bed of lettuce or only bread
and mayo, and oh! say a prayer before
you slice a single slice and lay
the flawless redness down and bite.
~Rick Maxson “Beefsteak”

As August fades away, I am impatiently watching our garden tomatoes ripen slowly. I hope they can soon be harvested, bulging red and ripe, a miracle on the vine, before the rains and blight set in. Then I can walk past the grocery store’s produce section with tomatoes displaying surface perfection and no flavor.

Ordinarily, I love and anticipate autumn’s arrival each year. Now, at seventy, I am autumnal year-round. The threat of seasonal blight leading to rot becomes personal. Lived out in real time, aging isn’t all “pumpkin spice” and “harvest gold.”

So who am I in this season of my life? I have been planted, weeded, nurtured, watered and warmed in anticipation of a glorious harvest. Before long, all must be gathered in.

The garden is a daily reminder: time is short, there is so much yet to get done.

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A Puddle-Wonderful World

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…when the world is mud-lucious…
when the world is puddle-wonderful...
~e.e. cummings from “[In Just]”

My father loved more than anything to
work outside in wet weather. Beginning
at daylight he’d go out in dripping brush
to mow or pull weeds for hog and chickens.
First his shoulders got damp and the drops from
his hat ran down his back. When even his
armpits were soaked he came in to dry out
by the fire, making coffee, read a little.
But if the rain continued he’d soon be
restless, and go out to sharpen tools in
the shed or carry wood from the pile,
then open up a puddle to the drain,
working by steps back into the downpour.

I thought he sought the privacy of rain,
the one time no one was likely to be
out and he was left to the intimacy
of drops touching every leaf and tree in
the woods and the easy muttering of
drip and runoff, the shine of pools behind
grass dams. 

He could not resist the long
ritual, the companionship and freedom
of falling weather, or even the cold
drenching, the heavy soak and chill of clothes
and sobbing of fingers and sacrifice
of shoes that earned a baking by the fire
and washed fatigue after the wandering
and loneliness in the country of rain.
~Robert Morgan “Working in the Rain”

I’m hearing much “easy muttering” since the rain started a few days ago. And not all of it is coming from dripping and runoff into puddles. We all can’t resist grumbling while everything outside soaks, oozes, and drips.

A few of us die-hards celebrate the wet, as it has been quite awhile since we had a decent rain. Everything, including me, is far too brittle, dusty and tinder-dry.

Rain is what makes the Pacific Northwest special, but like in Camelot,  many people prefer that it never fall till after sundown. To them, these all-day rains ensure this is not a more congenial spot for happily-ever-aftering than in Camelot.

I may be an oddity, though typical of northwest-born natives. I celebrate this country of rain whenever it comes, especially before sundown or after sunrise. I enjoy working in the lonely intimacy of a drizzling shower when no one else is out and about. Yet I’m not immune to muttering.

This was a hardy late summer rain, this falling weather in the last gasp of August.  Even this rain-lover spent the day puttering inside to avoid muttering about outside.

Guess I am overdue for a good drenching. Then comes the happily-ever-aftering.

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Going Back and Forth

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We were very tired, we were very merry —
We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry.
It was bare and bright, and smelled like a stable —
But we looked into a fire, we leaned across a table,
We lay on a hill-top underneath the moon;
And the whistles kept blowing, and the dawn came soon.

We were very tired, we were very merry —
We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry;
And you ate an apple, and I ate a pear,
From a dozen of each we had bought somewhere;
And the sky went wan, and the wind came cold,
And the sun rose dripping, a bucketful of gold.

We were very tired, we were very merry,
We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry.
We hailed, “Good morrow, mother!” to a shawl-covered head,
And bought a morning paper, which neither of us read;
And she wept, “God bless you!” for the apples and pears,
And we gave her all our money but our subway fares.
~Edna St. Vincent Millay “Recuerdo”

Over my eight decades, I’ve taken many ferry rides between the islands and mainland in the local Salish Sea, sailed through the inland passage from Vancouver Island almost to Alaska, taken a multi-level behemoth between Ireland and Scotland, and overnighted in a bunk bed on a Lake Victoria steamship between Kenya and Tanzania.

Each ride might have been an exotic adventure, wonderfully escapist. Yet the point was always the destination. I needed to get there from here or return from there to here, rather than simply enjoying the back and forth.

I’ve been incapable of being carefree and merry, full of impulse and joy, especially when it costs me a night’s sleep.

Have I ever done anything just for the heck of it?

It’s true. Being born a stick-in-the-mud, a drudge, an “old soul” and a grind is a heavy burden to live with for seventy years.

Perhaps I’m overdue for simply cherishing the voyage without worrying about the details of how I’m getting there or whether it will be on time.

I’m not only thriving on the sweet nectar of apples and pears growing in our orchard, but must share what I don’t use with someone who needs it more than I do.

Then, at some point, having been back and forth and forth and back, I’ll be ready to head home, tired yet carefree and merry and sated, infinitely blissed and eternally blessed.

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A Morning Promise Unfurls

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I know this sound, first birds of morning.
As a child, I waited for hours for the drape
of night to roll up again. Leaning into the first
hint of the fresh day, the fragile lace of hesitant
light, the receding darkness dappled with bird song,
able at last to close my eyes.

I know this sound, some kind of redemption,
waking me from scattered sleep, a healing fragment
even as the work of the previous day marks my bones
in notches. Night leaves its small fur as the dawn
pushes, as the birds persist, and morning unfurls
like a promise you hoped someone would keep.
~Susan Moorhead “First Light” from Carry Darkness, Carry Light

The grace of God means something like:

“Here is your life. You might never have been, but you are, because the party wouldn’t have been complete without you.
Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don’t be afraid. I am with you. Nothing can ever separate us. It’s for you I created the universe. I love you.”

There’s only one catch. Like any other gift, the gift of grace can be yours only if you’ll reach out and take it.

Maybe being able to reach out and take it is a gift too.
~Frederick Buechner from Wishful Thinking

Do not be afraid, for I have redeemed you.
I have called you by your name;
you are mine.

When you walk through the waters,
I’ll be with you;
you will never sink beneath the waves.
When the fire is burning all around you,
you will never be consumed by the flames.
When the fear of loneliness is looming,
then remember I am at your side.
When you dwell in the exile of a stranger,
remember you are precious in my eyes.
You are mine, O my child,
I am your Father,
and I love you with a perfect love.
~Gerard Markland “Do Not Be Afraid”

When I open my eyes in the morning
I depend on the promise of a new day
reminding me of hope and grace.

But if the unexpected terrible thing happens–
when beauty seems to hide its face,
I fear it is gone forever.

Yet, promises are kept:

in Words written
again and again and again,
-365 times in total-
once for every day of the year:

if only I can truly believe them,
if only I can reassure others so
they reach out and take them to heart

He is here, with us,
in this broken, too often terrible, world-
do not be afraid
do not be afraid
do not be afraid

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