Poetry is a life-cherishing force. For poems are not words, after all, but fires for the cold, ropes let down to the lost, something as necessary as bread in the pockets of the hungry. ~Mary Oliver from A Poetry Handbook
…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 from “Everything” from New and Selected Poems: Volume Two
Poetry may make us from time to time a little more aware of the deeper, unnamed feelings which form the substratum of our being, to which we rarely penetrate; for our lives are mostly a constant evasion of ourselves. —T.S. Eliotfrom The Use of Poetry and the Use of Criticism
Much of the time, on the surface, we appear a tangled mess – a jumble of unarticulated feelings and desires, needs and wants.
Deeper down, there is a hungry soul in a place that can’t be seen.
We rarely dip in there; it can be a sore spot we are tempted to touch but avoid doing so because of its tenderness.
The bright light of a few well chosen words can ring us like a bell; we are struck dumb finding such clarion clarity comes to a place so well hidden.
A rope of words drops to lift up the lost and sad and empty – a reminder mere words can rescue and revive.
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Winter is an etching, spring a watercolor, summer an oil painting and autumn a mosaic of them all. ~Stanley Horowitz, a poem in Readers’ Digest Nov. 1983
WinterWinter
L’Inverno (Winter) Opus 8, No. 4, in F minor
I. Allegro non molto– Frozen and trembling in the icy snow, In the severe blast of the horrible wind, As we run, we constantly stamp our feet, And our teeth chatter in the cold. II. Largo– To spend happy and quiet days near the fire, While, outside, the rain soaks hundreds. III. Allegro– We walk on the ice with slow steps, And tread carefully, for fear of falling. Symphony, If we go quickly, we slip and fall to the ground. Again we run on the ice, Until it cracks and opens. We hear, from closed doors, Sirocco, Boreas, and all the winds in battle. This is winter, but it brings joy. ~Vivaldi (Winter poem)
SpringSpringSpringSpring
La Primavera (Spring) Opus 8, No. 1, in E Major
I. Allegro– Festive Spring has arrived, The birds salute it with their happy song. And the brooks, caressed by little Zephyrs, Flow with a sweet murmur. The sky is covered with a black mantle, And thunder, and lightning, announce a storm. When they are silent, the birds Return to sing their lovely song. II. Largo e pianissimo sempre– And in the meadow, rich with flowers, To the sweet murmur of leaves and plants, The goatherd sleeps, with his faithful dog at his side. III. Danza pastorale. Allegro– To the festive sound of pastoral bagpipes, Dance nymphs and shepherds, At Spring’s brilliant appearance. ~Vivaldi (Spring poem)
SummerSummerSummerSummer
L’Estate (Summer) Opus 8, No. 2, in G minor
I. Allegro non molto– Under the heat of the burning summer sun, Languish man and flock; the pine is parched. The cuckoo finds its voice, and suddenly, The turtledove and goldfinch sing. A gentle breeze blows, But suddenly, the north wind appears. The shepherd weeps because, overhead, Lies the fierce storm, and his destiny. II. Adagio; Presto– His tired limbs are deprived of rest By his fear of lightning and fierce thunder, And by furious swarms of flies and hornets. III. Presto– Alas, how just are his fears, Thunder and lightening fill the Heavens, and the hail Slices the tops of the corn and other grain. ~Vivaldi (Summer poem)
AutumnAutumnAutumnAutumnAutumnAutumn
L’Autunno (Autumn) Opus 8, No. 3, in F Major
I. Allegro– The peasants celebrate with dance and song, The joy of a rich harvest. And, full of Bacchus’s liquor, They finish their celebration with sleep. II. Adagio molto– Each peasant ceases his dance and song. The mild air gives pleasure, And the season invites many To enjoy a sweet slumber. III. Allegro– The hunters, at the break of dawn, go to the hunt. With horns, guns, and dogs they are off, The beast flees, and they follow its trail. Already fearful and exhausted by the great noise, Of guns and dogs, and wounded, The exhausted beast tries to flee, but dies. ~Vivaldi (Autumn poem)
I walk this farm lane to stand at the same spot countless times through the year, as witness to the changing palette around me.
The Artist lovingly chooses His color and technique with a gentle touch for each season.
So too, He paints my life with richness and variety: from the austere lines in winter, to a green emergence in spring, a summer of sweet fruitfulness and a mosaic crescendo in autumn.
The Artist’s signature can be spotted on each masterpiece, gracing the transforming canvas of each of our lives.
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All winter your brute shoulders strained against collars, padding and steerhide over the ash hames, to haul sledges of cordwood for drying through spring and summer, for the Glenwood stove next winter, and for the simmering range.
In April you pulled cartloads of manure to spread on the fields, dark manure of Holsteins, and knobs of your own clustered with oats. All summer you mowed the grass in meadow and hayfield, the mowing machine clacketing beside you, while the sun walked high in the morning;
and after noon’s heat, you pulled a clawed rake through the same acres, gathering stacks, and dragged the wagon from stack to stack, and the built hayrack back, uphill to the chaffy barn, three loads of hay a day from standing grass in the morning.
Sundays you trotted the two miles to church with the light load a leather quartertop buggy, and grazed in the sound of hymns. Generation on generation, your neck rubbed the windowsill of the stall, smoothing the wood as the sea smooths glass.
When you were old and lame, when your shoulders hurt bending to graze, one October the man, who fed you and kept you, and harnessed you every morning, led you through corn stubble to sandy ground above Eagle Pond, and dug a hole beside you where you stood shuddering in your skin,
and lay the shotgun’s muzzle in the boneless hollow behind your ear, and fired the slug into your brain, and felled you into your grave, shoveling sand to cover you, setting goldenrod upright above you, where by next summer a dent in the ground made your monument.
For a hundred and fifty years, in the Pasture of dead horses, roots of pine trees pushed through the pale curves of your ribs, yellow blossoms flourished above you in autumn, and in winter frost heaved your bones in the ground – old toilers, soil makers: O Roger, Mackerel, Riley, Ned, Nellie, Chester, Lady Ghost. ~Donald Hall “Name of Horses”
Today, we said goodbye to our last Haflinger mare after four decades of being a breeding farm. We have two geldings left on the farm, in their early 20’s.
I was dreading this day but knew it would eventually come.
Belinda, who I have written about here, flew from the Netherlands as a baby with her mother in 1998, bringing new bloodlines to North America from an East German Haflinger breeding program, at the time only recently accessible to breeders with the opening of the Berlin Wall.
She proved to be a great broodmare here on our farm and her foals all sold quickly to other breeders. However, her last twelve years of retirement were complicated by metabolic imbalance and a tendency toward laminitis. We finally had to make the hard choice to bring out the vet to gently help her pass with intravenous medication into eternal lush pastures she could tolerate. Then the local hauler picked her up for cremation. No bullets to the brain, no hole to be dug.
We have done our final parting with our horses in this way over our forty years of Haflinger ownership. It is certainly different from how it was done when I was a kid on a small cow and horse farm. Our family mare, Dolly, in 1965, was put down by a vet’s bullet to the head after an agonizing bout with colic. My dad sent me back to the house beforehand, not wanting me to watch. Still, I could not help but hear the gunshot as if it had gone right through me as well. It took Dad the rest of the day to dig a hole deep enough so she could be buried on our farm.
At first her grave was my place to cry where no one but the trees and wild flowers could see.
When my tears finally dried up, it was a place to sing loudly where no one but chipmunks and my dog could hear.
And before I left for college, it became the sanctuary where I retreated to talk to God when my church no longer was.
I suspect her bones lie there still, with tall trees now growing through her ribs. That dent in the ground will always betray the spot.
We’ll remember you fondly, Belinda. You traveled far to come here and gave us your best. We promised you would live here on this farm, in peace, until your last breath.
Belinda’s last evening out on pasture
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The way the trees empty themselves of leaves, let drop their ponderous fruit, the way the turtle abandons the sun-warmed log, the way even the late-blooming aster succumbs to the power of frost—
this is not a new story. Still, on this morning, the hollowness of the season startles, filling the rooms of your house, filling the world with impossible light, improbable hope.
And so, what else can you do but let yourself be broken and emptied? What else is there but waiting in the autumn sun? ~Carolyn Locke “What Else?” from The Place We Become
So this is how life goes:
we are sowed, set down roots, bud and grow and flower and bloom and fruit and flourish,
then dry and change and wither and empty and break away to be carried off beyond this air and water and soil.
We thrive where we are planted, do what we could with a little nurture, then transcend the here and now.
So shall we plant the next generation in healthy soil. May we weed and water and feed as needed. May we never seek to overshadow the sun but step aside so its light fully shines on whoever comes next.
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And that is just the point… how the world, moist and beautiful, calls to each of us to make a new and serious response.
That’s the big question, the one the world throws at you every morning. “Here you are, alive. Would you like to make a comment?” ~Mary Oliver“The Morning Poem”
It is impossible to stay a silent observer of the world when you awake still alive.
An autumn morning demands a response.
I would like to make a comment.
It isn’t only nature pulling what was once lush and young into the ground: we witness flying leaves and dropping temperatures giving way to brisk winds and chill rains.
Humankind, like the change in seasons, is skilled at dying: we face violence across borders, nurture hatred which blusters, rips, drenches, encompasses, buries.
Nothing can remain as it was.
Yet I awake, lit and alive, struck and wrung by vanishing darkness, a witness to the sun rising up to catch the moon.
Called to comment. Dying to respond.
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After Van Gogh Things are growing strange these days, like Van Gogh’s yellow trees. Oh, do not be surprised by these yellow immensities, how out of proportion things in the picture seem. What you see in a way makes sense: the enormous, barren trees eclipsing the unimportant buildings at Arles station, the people all small, shadow-like, cast to the side. Perhaps Van Gogh should have left us out entirely, but then who would be left to blame for the strange blurring of the seasons in the forefront, the way summer bleeds into autumn, the forests burning deep into the winter, those winters where the snow piled so high, we were all nearly buried alive. Soon we’ll vanish, and no picture will even exist—unless, unless someone will answer (who will dare to answer), where in the world is spring? ~Jodi Hollander “Avenue of Plane Trees”
Who might dare to answer: where in the world is spring?
Who can know with any certainty? Sometimes it feels like time skips forward and a whole season is left behind.
The signs of the seasons might blur so there is no telling whether it is fall or spring without a calendar.
Are those trees just leafing out or simply trying to shed? Is the sunset’s golden glow from an early October light or April?
I can’t feel the movement of the earth under my feet. It needs to slow its spin on its axis and lengthen its orbital oval trip around the sun so I have more minutes in the day and more weeks in a year.
But, of course, that would make a huge mess of things. It is a good thing I’m not the design engineer.
It is as it is, and meant to be this way.
Though it may be blurry to me, it is clear and good and intentional to God. So He dares to answer where in the world is spring? Only He knows precisely where we are in the heavens…
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St. Cyril of Jerusalem, in instructing catechumens, wrote: “The dragon sits by the side of the road, watching those who pass. Beware lest he devour you. We go to the Father of Souls, but it is necessary to pass by the dragon.”
No matter what form the dragon may take, it is of this mysterious passage past him, or into his jaws, that stories of any depth will always be concerned to tell, and this being the case, it requires considerable courage at any time, in any country, not to turn away from the storyteller. ~Flannery O’Connor from “Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose”
How close the clouds press this October first and the rain—a gray scarf across the sky. In separate hospitals my father and a dear friend lie waiting for their respective operations, hours on a table as surgeons crack their chests. They were so brave when I talked to them last as they spoke of the good times we would share in the future. To neither did I say how much I loved them, nor express the extent of my fear. Their bodies are delicate glass boxes at which the world begins to fling its stones. Is this the day their long cry will be released? How can I live in this place without them? But today is also my son’s birthday. He is eight and beginning his difficult march. To him the sky is welcoming, the road straight. Far from my house he will open his presents— a book, a Swiss army knife, some music. Where is his manual of instructions? Where is his map showing the dark places and how to escape them? ~Stephen Dobyns “No Map” from Velocities:New and Selected Poems
Fairy tales do not tell children the dragons exist. Children already know that dragons exist. Fairy tales tell children the dragons can be killed. ~G.K. Chesterton from Tremendous Trifles
No, this is not the end— hardly an end, but a hard beginning. There will always be a morning— a rebirth.
So, here in the dark— in a night bleaker than bleak— in a time outside of time— there is a mark on the Holy map of your soul where you found your Maker in the hard, dark night— and then lived to see the light of dawn. ~Kimberly Phinney from“An Ode to Hard, Dark Nights
May it be a light to you in dark places, when all other lights go out. ~J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring
<Here there be dragons> was any place on the ancient maps that was unknown and unexplored, a place to avoid at all costs~ or for the daring and carefree, pointing to exactly the place to explore.
<Here there be dragons> marks the remainder of our days that dwell at the edge of life’s roadmap ~ scary, unpredictable, impenetrable ~ and often full of peril.
So many are lost without a map, unable to find their way in the dark, wrecked and wandering, weeping and wretched, believing they have come to the end.
Yet this is not the end, only the beginning. A hard start – all rebirths are hard.
As I have been shown mercy, so I must become mercy, be loving where others show hate, be giving when others take away, build up while others tear down.
We walk together into the emerging light – it’s right there where darkness used to dwell… following God’s holy map of our soul.
On a rusty iron throne Past the furthest star of space I saw Satan sit alone, Old and haggard was his face; For his work was done and he Rested in eternity.
And to him from out the sun Came his father and his friend Saying, now the work is done Enmity is at an end: And he guided Satan to Paradises that he knew.
Gabriel without a frown, Uriel without a spear, Raphael came singing down Welcoming their ancient peer, And they seated him beside One who had been crucified. ~James Stephens “The Fullness of Time”
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At times these days I think of the way the sun would set on the farmland around our small house in the autumn.
A view of the horizon, the entire circle of it, if you turned, the sun setting behind you, the sky in front becoming pink and soft, then slightly blue again, as though it could not stop going on in its beauty, then the land closest to the setting sun would get dark, almost black against the orange line of the horizon, but if you turn around, the land is still available to the eye with such softness, the few trees, the quiet fields of cover crops already turned, and the sky lingering, lingering, then finally dark.
As though the soul can be quiet for those moments. All life amazes me. ~Elizabeth Strout, from My Name is Lucy Barton
I have learned, from those much wiser than I am, to recognize moments meant for quieting.
The news of the world constantly rushes past; there is suffering beyond imagining in the lives of a few I know well and for millions I don’t know at all.
What little can I do to make a difference? So much need lies beyond my short reach.
Instead of feeling abandoned on the shores of overwhelm, I seek out the familiar, the routine, and the ordinary, lingering immersed in the recurring patterns of the day and night as the world keeps on spinning on its axis.
I too turn around to witness that which surrounds me, and in so doing, my soul is quieted. And amazed.
One year ago, my teacher and mentor Jane Goodall passed into eternity, leaving behind this message for us all…
Mountains are giant, restful, absorbent. You can heave your spirit into a mountain and the mountain will keep it, folded, and not throw it back as some creeks will. The creeks are the world with all its stimulus and beauty; I live there. But the mountains are home. ~Annie Dillard from Pilgrim at Tinker Creek
He found himself wondering at times, especially in the autumn, about the wild lands, and strange visions of mountains that he had never seen came into his dreams.
He loved mountains, or he has loved the thought of them marching on the edge of stories brought from far away; but now he was borne down by the insupportable weight of Middle-earth. He longed to shut out the immensity in a quiet room by a fire. ~J.R.R. Tolkienfrom The Lord of the Rings
This time of year, we feel a call to drive up the highway an hour or so to witness grander things than our own worries or the chaos of yet another election season.
There is always that moment as we turn the bend into Heather Meadows when Mount Shuksan suddenly appears, overwhelming the landscape and everything and everyone else.
There is simply nothing else to look at so I stand there gawking, forgetting to breathe.
Then I realize that I become more self-conscious rather than less: here I am at the foot of this incredible creation, wondering at how blessed I am to be there; that moment becomes all about me. Yet the mountain has been here for eons and will continue to be here for eons. Just a mere blip in that continuum, I feel summoned.
We leave behind all the political divisiveness and drama and talking heads: up in the mountains there is such sheer stillness all around us – nary a breeze or a bird call or even a bug making ripples on the lakes to spoil the perfect reflection.
I bring these images back with me to remember that moment of awestruck witness. The photographic image isn’t the real mountain or the pristine perfect reflection. Yet it means I was privileged to watch this mountain watching me back, welcoming me home.
The sweetest thing in all my life has been the longing — to reach the Mountain, to find the place where all the beauty came from — my country, the place where I ought to have been born. Do you think it all meant nothing, all the longing? The longing for home? For indeed it now feels not like going, but like going back. ~ C. S. Lewis from Till We Have Faces
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Fifteen years ago today, family and friends lost Jenny Rausch to eternity. She is someone we will never forget and I want to share a bit about what she taught me, but also direct you to a page of her wit and wisdom — some wonderful horse stories she had written over the years.
I spent this morning adjusting to this change in season by occupying myself with the familiar task of moving manure. Cleaning barn is a comforting chore, allowing me to transform tangible benefit from something objectionable and just plain stinky to the nurturing fertilizer of the future. It feels like I’ve actually accomplished something.
As I scooped and pushed the wheelbarrow, I remembered another barn cleaning over two decades ago, when I was one of three or four friends left cleaning over ninety stalls after a Haflinger horse event that I had organized at our local fairgrounds. Some people had brought their horses from over 1000 miles away to participate for several days. Whenever horse people gather, there were inevitable personality clashes and harsh words among some participants along with criticism directed at me that I had taken very personally.
As I struggled with the umpteenth wheelbarrow load of manure, tears stung my eyes and my heart. I was miserable with regrets over people not getting along. My work did not feel worth the pain I was feeling.
My friend Jenny Rausch had stayed behind with her family to help clean up the large facility and she could see I was struggling to keep my composure. Jenny put herself right in front of my wheelbarrow and looked me in the eye, insisting I stop for a moment and listen.
“You know, none of these troubles and conflicts will amount to a hill of beans years from now. People will remember a fun event in a beautiful part of the country, a wonderful time with their horses, their friends and family, and they’ll be all nostalgic about it, not giving a thought to the infighting or the sour attitudes or who said what to whom.
So don’t make this about you and whether you did or didn’t make everyone happy. You loved us all enough to make it possible to meet here and the rest was up to us. So quit being upset about what you can’t change. There’s too much you can still do for us.”
And then she gave me a hug that I will always cherish.
During tough times which have come often in my professional life, including the difficult and controversial decisions I had to make during the COVID pandemic, Jenny’s advice replays in my mind, reminding me to stop seeking appreciation from others, or feeling hurt when harsh words come my way.
None of these things amount to a hill of beans now…
She was right about the balm found in the tincture of time. She was right about giving up being upset in order to die to myself and my self-absorption, to keep focusing outward rather than inward.
Jenny, I have remembered what you said even though at times I relapse and forget.
A few years after that day in the barn, Jenny herself spent six years vigorously living her life every day while treating a relentless cancer. The tumor spread was initially slowed in the face of her faith and intense drive to live. Over time though, she became a rusting leaf, fading imperceptibly, crumbling at the edges until she finally let go.
Her dying on this day twelve years ago did not flash brilliance, nor draw attention at the end. Her intense focus during the years of her illness had always been outward to others, to her family and friends, to the numerous healers she spent so much time with in medical offices, to her belief in the plan God had written for her and others.
Despite her intense love for her husband and young children, she let go her hold on life here. And we all had to let her go.
Brilliance cloaks you as your focus is now on things eternal.
You were so right, Jenny. Conflicts from twenty-five years ago surely haven’t amounted to a hill of beans; all is remembered fondly by those who were part of the gathering. I especially treasure the words you wisely spoke to me as they have helped me through other tough times when I tend to focus on nurturing my own hurt feelings.
Bathing in the hurt never helps…
And I’m no longer upset that I can’t change the fact that you have left us. There is still so much you continue to do for us by staying alive in our memories. We won’t forget what you have said and written.
And so it goes… I know we’ll catch up later.
Jenny R –photo by Ginger Kathleen Coombs
…to love life, to love it even when you have no stomach for it and everything you’ve held dear crumbles like burnt paper in your hands, your throat filled with the silt of it. When grief sits with you, its tropical heat thickening the air, heavy as water more fit for gills than lungs; when grief weights you like your own flesh only more of it, an obesity of grief, you think, How can a body withstand this? Then you hold life like a face between your palms, a plain face, no charming smile, no violet eyes, and you say, yes, I will take you I will love you, again. — Ellen Bass “The Thing Is…” from Mules of Love
