Category: contentment

Awaiting a Time Less Bold

barnstormingblog2 Comments

My mother, who hates thunder storms,
Holds up each summer day and shakes
It out suspiciously, lest swarms
Of grape-dark clouds are lurking there;
But when the August weather breaks
And rains begin, and brittle frost
Sharpens the bird-abandoned air,
Her worried summer look is lost,

And I her son, though summer-born
And summer-loving, none the less
Am easier when the leaves are gone
Too often summer days appear
Emblems of perfect happiness
I can’t confront: I must await
A time less bold, less rich, less clear:
An autumn more appropriate.
~Philip Larkin “Mother, Summer, I” from Collected Poems.

I am summer-born. Like almost anyone else who lives and breathes, I’m also summer-loving. But this … this has simply been too much cheerful weather all at once. Stretches of weeks with no gray skies can start to become an uneasy expectation, as if we’re somehow owed sunny days.

I too hold up each summer day and shake it suspiciously, wondering if dark clouds or angry yellow jackets and wasps may be hiding inside. I scan the skies for the potential promise of precipitation, sniffing the air for a hint of moisture. When an occasional leaf lets go and drifts to the ground, I celebrate it as a preview of the upcoming autumn shattering of trees.

When the pressures of summer become too much for people like me, we enter warm weather mental hibernation, too overwhelmed by the multitude of options and opportunities and fresh produce and,
let’s face it, … pleasure and perfect happiness.

I can’t wait for the weather to break. I can’t wait for autumn, followed by a dreary winter, when I can once again start wistfully longing …
for summer.

One-Time
Monthly
Yearly

Make a one-time or recurring donation to support daily Barnstorming posts

Make a monthly donation

Make a yearly donation

Choose an amount

$10.00
$25.00
$50.00
$5.00
$15.00
$100.00
$5.00
$15.00
$100.00

Or enter a custom amount

$

Your contribution is deeply appreciated.

Your contribution is appreciated.

Your contribution is appreciated.

DonateDonate monthlyDonate yearly

Longing for More

barnstormingblog1 Comment

I prefer to sit all day
like a sack in a chair
and to lie all night
like a stone in my bed.

When food comes
I open my mouth.
When sleep comes
I close my eyes.

My body sings
only one song;
the wind turns
gray in my arms.

Flowers bloom.
Flowers die.
More is less.
I long for more.
~Mark Strand “The One Song” from Collected Poems

“fly-by feeding” video taken by Harry Rodenberger
windy day photo by Nate Lovegren

Sometimes, I feel I have been asleep for years. My eyes close easily, my ears turn off rather than listen to what is too hard to bear. Even then, my mouth opens, waiting to be fed more.

More and more and more…

We always want more than we have. In fact, we’re served “more” on a huge platter every day – such extravagant blessings placed right before us, even if we don’t recognize them as such.

It’s in every one of us to open up both our eyes, to listen closely and then open our mouths to sing one song together
– in peace, in harmony, in love –
and only then we’ll see what more tomorrow will bring…

One-Time
Monthly
Yearly

Make a one-time or recurring donation to support daily Barnstorming posts

Make a monthly donation

Make a yearly donation

Choose an amount

$10.00
$25.00
$50.00
$5.00
$15.00
$100.00
$5.00
$15.00
$100.00

Or enter a custom amount

$

Your contribution is deeply appreciated.

Your contribution is appreciated.

Your contribution is appreciated.

DonateDonate monthlyDonate yearly

The Moon-Pale Promise

barnstormingblogLeave a comment

from Claude Debussy’s Suite Bergamasque in memory of my mother

There’s D-flat major at the first and last,
but in between, a haze of harmonies
yearns lightward, though the light has long since passed.

I played the notes; she heard the light. The keys
were mine to coax and animate; their sound
was hers to claim: a shimmer of heart’s ease.

And while my fingers stretched and danced and found
their way through black and white, her ear would find
a prism—her own light parsed and unbound.

She had a knack for joy and was inclined
to wonder. Clair de lune had mesmerized
her, in a spell that left me far behind.

After my mother’s death, I was surprised
I still played it so often; I suppose
the effort occupied and organized

my sorrow-scattered mind. So in the throes
of grief, I practiced, as if I’d impress
a ghost with my devotion. And in those

half-haunted hours, I mastered more, I guess,
than just the notes. I hadn’t thought I’d learn
to hear what she did—but through some finesse

of time and skill and need, I now discern
the half-lit murmurings that no midnight
can mute, the moon-pale promise that can turn

unrest to peace, a star-sung appetite
for breath. At last I share my mother’s light.
~Jean Kreiling “Claire de Lune“

photo by Lea Lozano

I never practiced as much as I could have. Since the old piano sat in the living room right next to the kitchen, my mother endured my wrong notes and mis-timed rhythms, but never said a word of criticism. She was not an avid music listener, preferring radio talk and news, but committed to taking me to piano lessons over eight long years, sitting in the car reading a book while she waited for me.

Though not someone who listened to classical music for pleasure, she did love Clair de Lune, saying she could “see” the moon rise when I played it. Thus encouraged, I chose it as a recital piece so I could play it often for her, flowing my fingers across the keyboard smoothly, steadily, faithfully, like the rise of the moon in the night sky.

I want to feel a connection to a piece of music that so grips my heart and waters my eyes. It happens only rarely when I play – as an average pianist, I never truly progressed beyond technique – hitting the right notes and being true to the timing. But this piece comes close. When I hear it, I am no longer the youngster practicing it over and over, trying to somehow bring light to our dark living room. With age, I can now lose myself in the beauty of what Debussy was trying to convey in his choice of progression of notes, his resolution of harmony and key change, his slowing and flowing illumination of the piano keys.

I begin to hear what my mother must have heard, although I made so many mistakes, over and over.

Even so, the moon still rose for her.

One-Time
Monthly
Yearly

Make a one-time or recurring donation to support daily Barnstorming posts

Make a monthly donation

Make a yearly donation

Choose an amount

$10.00
$25.00
$50.00
$5.00
$15.00
$100.00
$5.00
$15.00
$100.00

Or enter a custom amount

$

Your contribution is deeply appreciated.

Your contribution is appreciated.

Your contribution is appreciated.

DonateDonate monthlyDonate yearly

One Silvery Ping

barnstormingblog3 Comments

Sometimes I think all the best poems
have been written already,
and no one has time to read them,
so why try to write more?

At other times though,
I remember how one flower
in a meadow already full of flowers
somehow adds to the general fireworks effect

as you get to the top of a hill
in Colorado, say, in high summer
and just look down at all that brimming color.
I also try to convince myself

that the smallest note of the smallest
instrument in the band,
the triangle for instance,
is important to the conductor

who stands there, pointing his finger
in the direction of the percussions,
demanding that one silvery ping.
And I decide not to stop trying,

at least not for a while, though in truth
I’d rather just sit here reading
how someone else has been acquainted
with the night already, and perfectly.
~Linda Pastan “Rereading Frost” from Queen of a Rainy Country. 

I have been one acquainted with the night.
I have walked out in rain—and back in rain.
I have outwalked the furthest city light.

I have looked down the saddest city lane.
I have passed by the watchman on his beat
And dropped my eyes, unwilling to explain.

I have stood still and stopped the sound of feet
When far away an interrupted cry
Came over houses from another street,

But not to call me back or say good-bye;
And further still at an unearthly height,
One luminary clock against the sky

Proclaimed the time was neither wrong nor right. 
I have been one acquainted with the night.
~Robert Frost “Acquainted with the Night”

This morning

poem hopes 

that even though
its lines are broken 

its reader 

will be drawn forward to the part where blueberries
firm against fingers 

say roundness sweetness unspeakable softness
     in the morning
light.
~L.L. Barkat, “This Morning” from The Golden Dress

I want to write with quiet hands. I
want to write while crossing the fields that are
fresh with daisies and everlasting and the
ordinary grass. I want to make poems while thinking of
the bread of heaven and the
cup of astonishment; let them be

songs in which nothing is neglected,
not a hope, not a promise. I want to make poems
that look into the earth and the heavens
and see the unseeable. I want them to honor
both the heart of faith, and the light of the world;
the gladness that says, without any words, everything.
~Mary Oliver “Everything”

Some of you ask why I post poems by other authors when I could be writing more original work myself.

My answer, like poet Linda Pastan above is:

Sometimes I think all the best poems
have been written already,
and no one has time to read them,
so why try to write more?

Yet, like Linda, I’ve decided not to stop trying. Since I’ve committed myself to being here every day to share something that may help me and someone else breathe in the fragrance of words and the world – I try to be the necessary and eloquent silver ping when the Conductor points at me at precisely the right moment in time. More often, I’m the “clang” creating a ruckus ringing the farm triangle bringing in everyone from all over the barnyard for lunch.

Even when my written lines are broken, or I say again what another has already said yet I feel it bears emphasis — I too try to write with quiet hands, in reverence and awe for what unseeable, unspeakable gifts God has granted us all.

I try to celebrate by illuminating words and pictures with a unique “ping” all of my own.

One-Time
Monthly
Yearly

Make a one-time or recurring donation to support daily Barnstorming posts

Make a monthly donation

Make a yearly donation

Choose an amount

$10.00
$25.00
$50.00
$5.00
$15.00
$100.00
$5.00
$15.00
$100.00

Or enter a custom amount

$

Your contribution is deeply appreciated.

Your contribution is appreciated.

Your contribution is appreciated.

DonateDonate monthlyDonate yearly

A Crush of Old Sweetness

barnstormingblog3 Comments

I’m on my knees among the crisp brown crunch
then stand       in time to see
two boys       slim teens in shorts       white t-shirts
faces glowing       talking quietly
bounce of a tennis ball fading as they pass
and I’m filled again
with a crush of old sweetness
at how giving a moment can be       as it vanishes
the roughened grey branches of the pear
small knobby fingers flung out at every tip
fresh clutch of weeds at my chest
~Rosie King “Again” from Time and Peonies

Sometimes this feeling hits me – like a blow to the chest taking away my breath – how time passes so swiftly. The flow of days takes bare knobby pear branches in March to April’s fragrant buds and blossoms, to May’s swelling fruit to harvest in late summer, then prepared for storage of its sweetness to be consumed in the dark of winter.
Another year and crop of pears gone – just like that.

In a flash of recognition, I try to grasp and clutch this realization to my heart and in one heartbeat it vanishes, leaving a residue of “what was” in the midst of “what is” while on the horizon is “what will be.”

Each year, I place our pears in a bottle (so to speak) –
actually jars and dehydrator –
it is so much easier than preserving the vanishing
hours, days and years.

I breathe in deeply and think:
How much this moment gives and takes.
How crushed I am by its sweetness.

One-Time
Monthly
Yearly

Make a one-time or recurring donation to support daily Barnstorming posts

Make a monthly donation

Make a yearly donation

Choose an amount

¤10.00
¤25.00
¤50.00
¤5.00
¤15.00
¤100.00
¤5.00
¤15.00
¤100.00

Or enter a custom amount

¤

Your contribution is deeply appreciated.

Your contribution is appreciated.

Your contribution is appreciated.

DonateDonate monthlyDonate yearly

No Other Now

barnstormingblog2 Comments

The whole idea of it makes me feel
like I’m coming down with something,
something worse than any stomach ache
or the headaches I get from reading in bad light-
a kind of measles of the spirit,
a mumps of the psyche,
a disfiguring chicken pox of the soul.

You tell me it is too early to be looking back,
but that is because you have forgotten
the perfect simplicity of being one
and the beautiful complexity introduced by two.
But I can lie on my bed and remember every digit.
At four I was an Arabian wizard.
I could make myself invisible
by drinking a glass of milk a certain way.
At seven I was a soldier, at nine a prince.

But now I am mostly at the window
watching the late afternoon light.
Back then it never fell so solemnly
against the side of my tree house,
and my bicycle never leaned against the garage
as it does today,
all the dark blue speed drained out of it.

This is the beginning of sadness, I say to myself,
as I walk through the universe in my sneakers.
It is time to say good-bye to my imaginary friends,
time to turn the first big number.

It seems only yesterday I used to believe
there was nothing under my skin but light.
If you cut me I could shine.
But now when I fall upon the sidewalks of life,
I skin my knees. I bleed.
~Billy Collins “On Turning Ten”

photo by Danyale Tamminga

No matter how hard you try to be what you once were, you can only be what you are here and now. Time hypnotizes. When you’re nine, you think you’ve always been nine years old and will always be. When you’re thirty, it seems you’ve always been balanced there on that bright rim of middle life. And then when you turn seventy, you are always and forever seventy. You’re in the present, you’re trapped in a young now or an old now, but there is no other now to be seen.
~ Ray Bradbury, Dandelion Wine

Some people turn sad awfully young. No special reason, it seems, but they seem almost to be born that way. They bruise easier, tire faster, cry quicker, remember longer and, as I say, get sadder younger than anyone else in the world. I know, for I’m one of them.
~Ray Bradbury, Dandelion Wine

Some reflections on moving from one decade of life to the next:

Turning ten is a big deal, no going back to single digits.
Turning twenty is a bid goodbye to a fleeting childhood.
Turning thirty is down to business of family, job and debt.
Turning forty is a mid-life muddle, a surging forth into the second half.
Turning fifty is settling in while finding the nest emptying.
Turning sixty is grateful hope for a fruitful third life trimester.
Turning seventy is just around the corner – there is no other now.
Turning eighty, ninety or hundred would be pure gift of grace.

I hope once again, as when I was nine,
I might only bleed out rays of light when cut –
I pray these final decades shine bright with meaning and purpose.

I like to cry. After I cry hard it’s like it’s morning again and I’m starting the day over.
~Ray Bradbury, Dandelion Wine

One-Time
Monthly
Yearly

Make a one-time or recurring donation to support daily Barnstorming posts

Make a monthly donation

Make a yearly donation

Choose an amount

¤10.00
¤25.00
¤50.00
¤5.00
¤15.00
¤100.00
¤5.00
¤15.00
¤100.00

Or enter a custom amount

¤

Your contribution is deeply appreciated.

Your contribution is appreciated.

Your contribution is appreciated.

DonateDonate monthlyDonate yearly

They All Know…

barnstormingblog4 Comments

The squirrel sticks its head from the tree’s knot,
shrieking directions, a village gossip with a huge
plumed tail. It moves down the scalloped bark, swaying
on tiny nails, and stops, eye-level with my swollen belly.
A black blur of bird swoops, the velvet of its wing
against my cheek. It nests among a ruckus of robins,
less interested in being fed than being heard. Around
the curve of the road, I near the farmer’s fence. His
mare lowers her fan of lashes. In the pond, a fish flips,
exposing its silver stomach.
~Tina Barry, “The Animals Know” from Beautiful Raft

photo by Harry Rodenberger
video by Harry Rodenberger

It has been over thirty years since I carried a child in my belly. Each time, I remember having the feeling our farm animals knew I was “expecting” even before it became obvious. Maybe it was because I was so overjoyed, I carried myself differently. After experiencing a miscarriage and two years of infertility workups, it felt almost magical being pregnant. It seemed as if our invisibly growing baby was already welcomed by all the creatures on our farm and were celebrating the anticipation along with us.

While I was pregnant with our first son, after such a long wait for parenthood, we bought a new dog, Tango and moved to a farm from the city. She was a year old and had never been around babies, so we weren’t sure how she would adapt to both new surroundings and new owners. As we drove six hours to her bring her to her new home, she happily settled in for the trip lying on my bulging tummy, pummeled by kicks from a baby she would soon meet face to face.

She loved him as soon as she saw him.
She had known him and understood him as he grew inside.

Now, decades later, our family’s next generation is fulfilling their own hopes for the future: we have four cherished grandchildren in addition to the two we are now waiting to meet — one will be any day now.

The expectation of new life is so sweet. All that lives and breathes anticipates this new soul budding and about to bloom.

Somehow, they just know…

One-Time
Monthly
Yearly

Make a one-time or recurring donation to support daily Barnstorming posts

Make a monthly donation

Make a yearly donation

Choose an amount

¤10.00
¤25.00
¤50.00
¤5.00
¤15.00
¤100.00
¤5.00
¤15.00
¤100.00

Or enter a custom amount

¤

Your contribution is deeply appreciated.

Your contribution is appreciated.

Your contribution is appreciated.

DonateDonate monthlyDonate yearly

What I Clung To…

barnstormingblogLeave a comment

Back then, what did I know?
The names of subway lines, busses.
How long it took to walk 20 blocks.

Uptown and downtown.
Not north, not south, not you.

When I saw you, later, seaweed reefed in the air,
you were grey-green, incomprehensible, old.
What you clung to, hung from: old.
Trees looking half-dead, stones.

Marriage of fungi and algae,
chemists of air,
changers of nitrogen-unusable into nitrogen-usable.

Like those nameless ones
who kept painting, shaping, engraving,
unseen, unread, unremembered.
Not caring if they were no good, if they were past it.

Rock wools, water fans, earth scale, mouse ears, dust,
ash-of-the-woods.
Transformers unvalued, uncounted.
Cell by cell, word by word, making a world they could live in.
~Jane Hirshfield “For the Lobaria, Usnea, Witches Hair, Map Lichen, Beard Lichen, Ground Lichen, Shield Lichen“

It is a lichen day.
Not a bit of rotten wood lies on the dead leaves,
but it is covered with fresh, green cup lichens…
All the world seems a great lichen and to grow like one.

Nature doth thus kindly heal every wound.
By the mediation of a thousand little mosses and fungi,
the most unsightly objects become radiant of beauty.
There seem to be two sides of this world,
presented us at different times,
as we see things in growth or dissolution, in life or death.

And seen with the eye of the poet,
as God sees them,
all things are alive and beautiful
~Henry David Thoreau from his journal

The truth is-
I’m a bit of a lichen myself –
not easily defined,
somewhat an opportunist,
thriving in gray drizzle,
sometimes colorful but most often not,
attempting to cover and heal unseen wounds.

Mostly I hang on, clinging tightly,
persevering,
at times obnoxiously tenacious
and not always appreciated,
yet…unique in an other worldly way.

A dreamer of fairy tale kingdoms
while living this simple peasant’s life
in plain sight.

One-Time
Monthly
Yearly

Make a one-time or recurring donation to support daily Barnstorming posts

Make a monthly donation

Make a yearly donation

Choose an amount

¤10.00
¤25.00
¤50.00
¤5.00
¤15.00
¤100.00
¤5.00
¤15.00
¤100.00

Or enter a custom amount

¤

Your contribution is deeply appreciated.

Your contribution is appreciated.

Your contribution is appreciated.

DonateDonate monthlyDonate yearly

The Honesty of Horses

barnstormingblog3 Comments

It was dragging my hands along its belly,
loosing the bit and wiping the spit
from its mouth that made me
a snatch of grass in the thing’s maw,
a fly tasting its ear. It was
touching my nose to his that made me know
the clover’s bloom, my wet eye to his that
made me know the long field’s secrets.
But it was putting my heart to the horse’s that made me know
the sorrow of horses. Made me
forsake my thumbs for the sheen of unshod hooves.
And in this way drop my torches.
And in this way drop my knives.
Feel the small song in my chest
swell and my coat glisten and twitch.
And my face grow long.
And these words cast off, at last,
for the slow honest tongue of horses.
~Ross Gay “Becoming A Horse”

photo by Emily Vander Haak

Living the dream of nearly every young girl, I grew up with a horse in our back field. The first was a raw-boned old paint who allowed my older sister and toddler me to sit atop him, walk around the barnyard and on the driveway at no more than a walk. He was arthritic and sore, but patient and tolerant to the attention of little girls. When we moved away to another part of the state, he didn’t come with us and I was too young to fully understand where he had been sent.

The horse on our new farm was my sister’s 4H project who was a spiffy chestnut mare with a penchant for a choppy trot and speedy canter. My sister would go miles with friends on horseback down back-country roads. Sadly, my sister soon became allergic (hives and swelling) to any contact with horses. I was barely old enough to start riding by myself in our fields.The little mare missed her adventures with my sister but seemed to adapt to my inexperience and took care of me as best she could – I never fell off. One night, she broke through a fence and ate her fill in a field of growing oat grass. The next day she was euthanized due to terrible colic. I was inconsolable, crying for days when visiting her burial spot on our property.

These first two horses tolerated the inexperience of their handlers and tried to compensate for it. I’ve since owned a few horses who knew exactly how to take advantage of such inexperience. Horses size up people quickly as our feelings and fear can be so transparent; it takes much longer for us to understand the complexity of their equine mind. Many diverse training techniques are marketed as testimony to that mystery.

I have learned that horses appreciate a patient and quiet approach, reflecting their consistency and honesty. They like to be looked in the eye and appreciate a soft breath blown over their whiskers. They want us to find their itchy spots rather than act the part of a pseudo-predator with intent to harm.

That’s not asking too much of us.

In return, we learn how best to communicate what we need from them. They are remarkably willing to work when they understand the job and feel appreciated. In return, we are given a chance to experience the world through their eyes and ears, to comprehend the remarkable sensitivity of a skin able to shiver a fly away.

I’ve spent much of my life learning with horses and hope there are a few years still left to learn more. Whatever sorrow they feel in their hearts is when I’ve failed to be who they need me to be. Their gift to me is an honest willingness to forgive, again and yet again.

One-Time
Monthly
Yearly

Make a one-time or recurring donation to support daily Barnstorming posts

Make a monthly donation

Make a yearly donation

Choose an amount

¤10.00
¤25.00
¤50.00
¤5.00
¤15.00
¤100.00
¤5.00
¤15.00
¤100.00

Or enter a custom amount

¤

Your contribution is deeply appreciated.

Your contribution is appreciated.

Your contribution is appreciated.

DonateDonate monthlyDonate yearly

June’s Naïve Light

barnstormingblogLeave a comment

Your voice, with clear location of June days,
Called me- outside the window. You were there,
Light yet composed, as in the just soft stare
Of uncontested summer all things raise
Plainly their seeming into seamless air.

Then your love looked as simple and entire
As that picked pear you tossed me, and your face
As legible as pearskin’s fleck and trace,
Which promise always wine, by mottled fire
More fatal flashed than ever human grace.

And your gay gift – Oh when I saw it fall
Into my hands, through all that naive light,
It seemed as blessed with truth and new delight
As must have been the first great gift of all.
~Richard Wilbur “June Light”

June, so green, so prolific, can have the feel of the first Garden. Our trees are heavy with growing fruit and, thankfully, none are forbidden. I tread quietly through the sunlit orchard, not wanting to spoil this glad gift of a morning.

Later in the summer, when a ripe pear loosens its grip from the branch and settles into my hands, I will share of its pure grace and taste. With gratitude, I will offer it up, glistening with dew and truth, to you.

One-Time
Monthly
Yearly

Make a one-time or recurring donation to support daily Barnstorming posts

Make a monthly donation

Make a yearly donation

Choose an amount

¤10.00
¤25.00
¤50.00
¤5.00
¤15.00
¤100.00
¤5.00
¤15.00
¤100.00

Or enter a custom amount

¤

Your contribution is deeply appreciated.

Your contribution is appreciated.

Your contribution is appreciated.

DonateDonate monthlyDonate yearly