Category: reverie

Heavens’ Embroidered Cloths

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To see a World in a Grain of Sand
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower,
Hold Infinity in the Palm of your Hand,
and Eternity in an Hour.

When the Soul Slept in Beams of Light 
God Appears & God is Light
To those poor Souls who dwell in Night 
But does a Human Form Display
To those who Dwell in Realms of day
~William Blake from “Auguries of Innocence”

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Had I the heavens’ embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.
~William Butler Yeats “Aedh Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven”

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If I look closely enough underfoot,
I might find the extraordinary
in the commonplace things of life.

So I keep my eyes alert;
my heart open to infinite possibilities
and try to tread softly.

Sometimes what I see is so beautiful,
it is uncovering heaven come to earth,
when the cosmos is contained
within the commonplace.

The God of Light and Living Water
is no further away
than my back yard.

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Where You Go, I Will Go: All This Juice and All This Joy

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Nothing is so beautiful as Spring –         
   When weeds, in wheels, shoot long and lovely and lush;         
   Thrush’s eggs look little low heavens, and thrush         
Through the echoing timber does so rinse and wring         
The ear, it strikes like lightnings to hear him sing;
   The glassy peartree leaves and blooms, they brush         
   The descending blue; that blue is all in a rush         
With richness; the racing lambs too have fair their fling.         

What is all this juice and all this joy?         
   A strain of the earth’s sweet being in the beginning
In Eden garden. – Have, get, before it cloy,         
   Before it cloud, Christ, lord, and sour with sinning,         
Innocent mind and Mayday in girl and boy,         
   Most, O maid’s child, thy choice and worthy the winning. 
~Gerard Manley Hopkins “Spring”

Once, we were innocent,
now, no longer.

Cloyed and clouded by sin.

Given a choice,
we chose sour over the sweetness we were born to,
giving up walks together in the cool of the day
to feed an appetite that could never be sated.

God made a choice to win us back with His own blood
as if we are worthy of Him.
He says we are.
He dies to prove it.

Every day I try to believe
our earth can be sweet and beautiful again.
And then maybe so can I.

This year’s Lenten theme:

…where you go I will go…
Ruth 1:16

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In My Imagination

barnstormingblog5 Comments

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 Susquehanna by Edmund Darch Lewis
Hayfield–oil painting by Scott Prior http://www.scottpriorart.com
Shoshone Falls on the Snake River by Thomas Moran
Hare by David Stribbling

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.

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 or 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.

And when the light and inspiration is just right, what I see in my mind is ready to spring right out of the frame.

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Standing in Stillness

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Broad August burns in milky skies,
The world is blanched with hazy heat;
The vast green pasture, even, lies
Too hot and bright for eyes and feet.

Amid the grassy levels rears
The sycamore against the sun
The dark boughs of a hundred years,
The emerald foliage of one.

Lulled in a dream of shade and sheen,
Within the clement twilight thrown
By that great cloud of floating green,
A horse is standing, still as stone.

He stirs nor head nor hoof, although
The grass is fresh beneath the branch;
His tail alone swings to and fro
In graceful curves from haunch to haunch.

He stands quite lost, indifferent
To rack or pasture, trace or rein;
He feels the vaguely sweet content
Of perfect sloth in limb and brain.
~William Canton “Standing Still”

Sweet contentment is a horse dozing in the summer field, completely sated by grass and clover, tail switching and skin rippling automatically to discourage flies.

I too wish at times for that stillness of mind and body, allowing myself to simply “be” without concern about yesterday’s travails, or what duties await me tomorrow.

I flunked sloth long ago.  Perhaps I was born driven.  My older sister, never a morning person, was thoroughly annoyed to share a bedroom with a toddler who awoke chirpy and cheerful, singing “Twinkle Twinkle” for all to hear and ready to conquer the day.

Since retiring, I admit I am becoming accustomed now to sloth-dom, though I am still too chipper in the early morning. It is a distinct character flaw.

Even so, I’m not immune to the attractions of a hot hazy day of doing absolutely nothing but standing still switching at flies. I envy our retired ponies in the pasture who spend the day grazing, moseying, and lazing. I worked hard many years to make that life possible for them.

I want to use my days well.
I want to be worthy.
I want to know there is a reason to be here beyond just warning the flies away.

It is absolutely enough to enjoy the glory of it all.

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My Legs Were Oars…

barnstormingblog3 Comments

How do you like to go up in a swing,
Up in the air so blue?
Oh, I do think it the pleasantest thing
Ever a child can do!

Up in the air and over the wall,
Till I can see so wide,
River and trees and cattle and all
Over the countryside—

Till I look down on the garden green,
Down on the roof so brown—
Up in the air I go flying again,
Up in the air and down!
~Robert Louis Stevenson “The Swing”

When I was five and
undifferentiated energy, animal spirits,
pent-up desire for the unknown built in me
a head of steam I had
no other way to let off, I ran
at top speed back and forth
end to end of the drawingroom,
bay to French window, shouting–
roaring, really–slamming
deliberately into the rosewood
desk at one end, the shaken
window-frames at the other, till the fit
wore out or some grownup stopped me.

But when I was six I found better means:
on its merry gallows
of dark-green wood my swing, new-built,
awaited my pleasure, I rushed
out to it, pulled the seat
all the way back to get a good start, and
vigorously pumped it up to the highest arc:
my legs were oars, I was rowing a boat in air–
and then, then from the furthest
forward swing of the ropes

I let go and flew!

At large in the unsustaining air,
flew clear over the lawn across
the breadth of the garden
and fell, Icarian, dazed,
among hollyhocks, snapdragons, love-in-a-mist,
and stood up uninjured, ready
to swing and fly over and over.

The need passed as I grew;
the mind took over, devising
paths for that force in me, and the body curled up,
sedentary, glad to be quiet and read and read,
save once in a while, when it demanded
to leap about or to whirl–or later still
to walk swiftly in wind and rain
long and far and into the dusk,
wanting some absolute, some exhaustion.
~Denise Levertov “Animal Spirits”

As children we have energy that demands to be unleashed, whether it is stomping in puddles, climbing trees, running up a hill or swinging as high as possible.

I do remember those times but my feeling of unlimited energy has faded quite a bit over the last decade or so. At some point, I lost my desire to run and jump and twirl and swing and instead, prefer to be tucked in a favorite chair with a book. If not reading, I’m out wandering our fields in all kinds of weather, my mind more energized than my muscles.

Yes, I wish I might soar through the air again, launching from a swing into a nest of flowers. But I would risk breaking something more than my pride. So now, I am content on a porch swing and using my leg oars for a gentle stroll. My days of launching myself into mid-air are over — except in my dreams when I land with a thump, waking up sore all over…

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Just Pay Attention

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It doesn’t have to be
the blue iris, it could be
weeds in a vacant lot, or a few
small stones; just
pay attention, then patch
a few words together and don’t try
to make them elaborate, this isn’t
a contest but the doorway
into thanks, and a silence in which
another voice may speak.
~Mary Oliver “Blue Iris”

Thou art the Iris, fair among the fairest,
   Who, armed with golden rod
And winged with the celestial azure, bearest
   The message of some God.
~Henry Wadsworth Longfellow from Flower-de-Luce

To plunge headlong into
the heart of a blossom, its amber eyes
inscrutably focusing on your own,
magnified by a lens of dew.
Whose scent, invisible,
drowns you in opulence, and for which
you can find nothing adequate to say.

You sense that you are loved wholly,
yet are quite unable to understand why.
But then, you lift your face,
creased with the ordinary, to a heaven
that is breaking into blue,
and find your contentment utterly beyond
telling, unspeakable, uncontained.
~Luci Shaw from “Speechless” from  Sea Glass

May your blooms be floriferous and in good form,
Distinctive, with good substance, flare, and airborne,
With standards and falls that endure, never torn.
May you display many buds and blooms sublime,
In graceful proportion on strong stalks each day,
Gently floating above the fans and the fray.
May you too reach toward the moon and stars,
Bloom after bloom, many seasons in the sun,
Enjoying your life, health, and each loved one,
Until your living days are artfully done.
~Georgia Gudykunst “An Iris Blessing”

Whenever I allow my eye to peer into
an iris, it takes all my attention:
I need a flotation device
and depth finder.
I’m likely to get lost,
sweeping and swooning
through inner space
of tunnels, canyons and corners,
coming up for air and diving in again
to journey into exotic locales
draped in silken hues
~this fairy land on a stem~
Patching a few words together,
I’m immersed in the possibilities,
blessed by such an impossible blossom.

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Thoughts We Cannot Say

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A hundred thousand birds salute the day:–
        One solitary bird salutes the night:
Its mellow grieving wiles our grief away,
        And tunes our weary watches to delight;
It seems to sing the thoughts we cannot say,
        To know and sing them, and to set them right;
Until we feel once more that May is May,
        And hope some buds may bloom without a blight.
This solitary bird outweighs, outvies,
        The hundred thousand merry-making birds
Whose innocent warblings yet might make us wise
Would we but follow when they bid us rise,
        Would we but set their notes of praise to words
And launch our hearts up with them to the skies.
~Christina Rossetti “A Hundred Thousand Birds”

photo by Harry Rodenberger

Birds afloat in air’s current,
sacred breath? No, not breath of God,
it seems, but God
the air enveloping the whole
globe of being.
It’s we who breathe, in, out, in, the sacred,
leaves astir, our wings
rising, ruffled—but only saints
take flight…
But storm or still,
numb or poised in attention,
we inhale, exhale, inhale,
encompassed, encompassed.
~Denise Levertov from “In Whom We Live and Move and Have Our Being” from The Stream and the Sapphire

As if reluctant to let go the setting sun last night,
one lone bird still sang a twilight song,
long after the others fell asleep,
their heads tucked neatly under their wings.

This lone bird had not yet finished with the day,
breathing in and out its plaintive melody,
articulating my thoughts I could not say.

And before a hint of light this May morning,
I am swept from my dreams
by a full chorus singing from the same perch,
no longer a lone voice, but hundreds.

My day is launched by the warbling songs,
but I cannot forget twilight’s one reluctant bird
who fought the impending darkness using only its voice.

I too fight back the darkness with what I write here,
if I can keep it at bay:
inhaling, exhaling, encompassed in Breath.
I want to sing out light to Light and live light in Light.

No darkness here.

I hear a bird chirping, up in the sky
I’d like to be free like that spread my wings so high I
see the river flowing water running by
I’d like to be that river, see what I might find

I feel the wind a blowin’, slowly changing time
I’d like to be that wind, I’d swirl and the shape sky
I smell the flowers blooming, opening for spring
I’d like to be those flowers, open to everything

I feel the seasons change, the leaves, the snow and sun
I’d like to be those seasons, made up and undone
I taste the living earth, the seeds that grow within
I’d like to be that earth, a home where life begins

I see the moon a risin’, reaching into night
I’d like to be that moon, a knowing glowing light
I know the silence as the world begins to wake
I’d like to be that silence as the morning breaks

He doesn’t know the world at all
Who stays in his nest and doesn’t go out.
He doesn’t know what birds know best
Nor what I sing about, Nor what I sing about, Nor what sing about:
That the world is full of loveliness.

When dew-drops sparkle in the grass
And earth is aflood with morning light. light
A blackbird sings upon a bush
To greet the dawning after night,
the dawning after night,
the dawning after night.
Then I know how fine it is to live.

Hey, try to open your heart to beauty;
Go to the woods someday
And weave a wreath of memory there.
Then if tears obscure your way
You’ll know how wonderful it is
To be alive.
~Paul Read

The Magical Frontier

barnstormingblog4 Comments

Between the March and April line —
That magical frontier
Beyond which summer hesitates,
Almost too heavenly near.

The saddest noise, the sweetest noise,
The maddest noise that grows, —
The birds, they make it in the spring,
At night’s delicious close.

It makes us think of all the dead
That sauntered with us here,
By separation’s sorcery
Made cruelly more dear.

It makes us think of what we had,
And what we now deplore.
We almost wish those siren throats
Would go and sing no more.

An ear can break a human heart
As quickly as a spear,
We wish the ear had not a heart
So dangerously near.
~Emily Dickinson “The Saddest Noise”

Every spring
I hear the thrush singing
in the glowing woods
he is only passing through.
His voice is deep,
then he lifts it until it seems
to fall from the sky.
I am thrilled.
I am grateful.
Then, by the end of morning,
he’s gone, nothing but silence
out of the tree
where he rested for a night.
And this I find acceptable.
Not enough is a poor life.
But too much is, well, too much.
Imagine Verdi or Mahler
every day, all day.
It would exhaust anyone.
~Mary Oliver “In Our Woods, Sometimes a Rare Music ” from “A Thousand Mornings”

What does it say about me that a only a few months ago, in the inky darkness of December mornings, I was yearning for the earlier sunrises of spring. Once we’re well into April, the birdsong symphony alarm clock each morning is no longer so compelling. 

This confirms my suspicion that I’m incapable of reveling in the moment at hand, something that would likely take years of therapy to undo. I’m sure there is some deep seated issue here, but I’m too sleep deprived to pursue it.

My eyes pop open earlier than I wish, aided and abetted by vigorous birdsong in the trees surrounding our farm house. Daylight sneaks through the venetian blinds. Once the bird chorus starts, with one lone chirpy voice in the apple tree by our bedroom window, it rapidly becomes a full frontal onslaught orchestra from all manner of avian life-forms, singing from the plum, cherry, walnut, fir and chestnut. Sleep is irretrievable.

Yet it would be such a poor life without the birdsong.
Even so, too much is … a bit too much.

I already need a nap.

photo by Harry Rodenberger

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For a Moment of Time

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The tree, and its haunting bird,
Are the loves of my heart;
But where is the word, the word,
Oh where is the art,
To say, or even to see,
For a moment of time,
What the Tree and the Bird must be
In the true sublime?

They shine, listening to the soul,
And the soul replies;
But the inner love is not whole, 
and the moment dies.

Oh give me before I die
The grace to see
With eternal, ultimate eye,
The Bird and the Tree.
The song in the living Green,
The Tree and the Bird –
Oh have they ever been seen,
Ever been heard?
~Ruth Pitter “The Bird in the Tree”

Then came a sound even more delicious than the sound of water. Close beside the path they were following a bird suddenly chirped from the branch of a tree. It was answered by the chuckle of another bird a little further off.

And then, as if that had been signal, there was chattering and chirruping in every direction, and then a moment of full song, and within five minutes the whole wood was ringing with birds’ music, and wherever Edmund’s eyes turned he saw birds alighting on branches, or sailing overhead or chasing one another or having their little quarrels or tidying up their feathers with their beaks.
~C.S. Lewis from The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe

Every day now we hear hunters firing in the woods and the wetlands around our farm, most likely aiming for the few ducks that have decided to stay in the marshes through the winter, or possibly a Canadian goose or a deer to bring home for the freezer. Our usual day-long serenade of birdsong from the forest is replaced by shotguns popping, hawks and eagles chittering from the treetops, with Stellar jays and squirrels arguing over the last of the filbert nuts.

In the clear cold evenings, when coyotes aren’t howling in the moonlight, the owls hoot to each other across the fields from one patch of woods to another, their gentle resonant conversation echoing back and forth. 

During these chilly months, there are no longer birdsong arias in the trees;  I’m left bereft of the musical tapestry of chirps and trills and twitters.

So it is too quiet, a time of bereavement. The frosty silence of darkened days, interrupted by gunshot percussion, is like a baton raised in anticipation after rapping the podium to bring us all to attention. I wait and listen for the downbeat to come — the return of birds and peeper frogs tuning their throats, rehearsing their spring symphony.

May their eternal and ultimate concert never end.

I hope you love birds too. It is economical. It saves going to heaven.
~Emily Dickinson in an 1885 letter to Miss Eugenia Hall

Bird in a tree, bird in a tree
What you doin’ way up there?
Why do you sing, why do you sing?
Are you looking for your lady fair?
Did she fly away to another tree?
Do you know not where she hides?
All day you sing the same old song
She must be hard to find

[Verse 2]
Bird in a tree, bird in a tree
What’s it like to be able to fly?
I figure if I had wings like you
Not a wasted day’d go by
I’d fly above the mountaintops
I’d do barrel-rolls and dives
I’d snack upon the wiggly worms
And be happy all my life

[Verse 3]
Bird in a tree, bird in a tree
What you doin’ way up there?
Why do you sing, why do you sing?
Are you looking for your lady fair?
Did she leave you late in the summertime
After such a lovely spring?
Are afraid that come the winter
You’ll be left in the cold and lonely?

[Verse 4]
Bird in a tree, bird in a tree
Who taught you to sing so well?
Do you know that I am listening?
Brother bird, can you even tell?
And though your love might be far away
Even another town
You sing your song all through the day
In case she comes around

[Verse 5]
Bird in a tree, bird in a tree
Oh, the sun is getting wide
Soon the night will come
And the morning won’t be for a while
So fare thee well, dear friend of mine
What a pleasure, I must say
We both should prob’ly get some sleep
Tomorrow’s another day

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Under My Eyelashes

barnstormingblog1 Comment
9/24/2023 -7:12 AM
9/24/22 6:55 AM
9/24/21 6:34 AM
9/24/20 7:22 AM

You can
die for it-
an idea,
or the world. People
have done so,
brilliantly,
letting
their small bodies be bound
to the stake,
creating
an unforgettable
fury of light. But
this morning,
climbing the familiar hills
in the familiar
fabric of dawn, I thought
of China,
and India
and Europe, and I thought
how the sun
blazes
for everyone just
so joyfully
as it rises
under the lashes
of my own eyes, and I thought
I am so many!
What is my name?
What is the name
of the deep breath I would take
over and over
for all of us? Call it
whatever you want, it is
happiness, it is another one
of the ways to enter
fire.
~Mary Oliver “Sunrise”

9/24/19 6:55 AM
9/24/18 6:50 AM
9/24/17 7:03 AM
9/24/17 (later)
9/24/17 (even later~)

Over the years, I have not missed many early autumn sunrises – most I have not recorded as they are often gray and rainy.

This particular day of September – the 24th – has been a treasure trove of color and cloud patterns and light for the last decade. Today I share these with you in their variety and beauty.

Every day, let us watch the sun rise with its light under our eyelashes – the fire of happiness illuminating us all as morning breaks open, like the First Day.

9/24/16
9/24/15
9/24/14
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