Category: clouds

The Edge of the Known World

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I came here to study hard things
– rock mountain and salt sea –
and to temper my spirit on their edges. 
“Teach me thy ways, O Lord” is, like all prayers,
a rash one, and one I cannot but recommend. 

These mountains — Mount Baker and the Sisters and Shuksan,
the Canadian Coastal Range and the Olympics on the peninsula — are surely the edge of the known and comprehended world…. 

That they bear their own unimaginable masses and weathers aloft, holding them up in the sky for anyone to see plain, makes them,
as Chesterton said of the Eucharist, only the more mysterious
by their very visibility and absence of secrecy.
~Annie Dillard (who lived in Whatcom County in the 70s) from Holy the Firm

Sometimes the mountain
is hidden from me in veils
of cloud, sometimes
I am hidden from the mountain
in veils of inattention, apathy, fatigue,
when I forget or refuse to go
down to the shore or a few yards
up the road, on a clear day,
to reconfirm
that witnessing presence.
~Denise Levertov  “Witness”

Even on the days like today when the mountains are hidden behind a veil of clouds, I have every confidence they are there.  They have not moved in the night, gone to another county, blown up or melted down.  My vision isn’t penetrating enough to see them through cloud cover today, but they will return to my line of sight, if not tomorrow, perhaps the next day, maybe not until next week. 

I know this and have faith it is true – the mountains do not keep themselves a secret.

On the days when I am not bothering to look for them, too preoccupied so walk right past their obvious grandeur and presence, then they reach out to me and call me back, refocusing me. 

There are times when I turn a corner on the farm and glance up, and there rests a mountain, a silent and overwhelming witness to beauty and steadfastness. I literally gasp at not noticing before, at not remembering how I’m blessed by it being there even at the times I can’t be bothered.

It witnesses my lack of witness and, so in its mysterious way of being in plain sight, stays put to hold me fast yet another day.  And so I keep coming back to gaze – sometimes just at clouds – yearning to lift their veil, and as a result, lift my veil, just one more time.

Like Right Now

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It could happen any time, tornado,
earthquake, Armageddon. It could happen.
Or sunshine, love, salvation.

It could, you know. That’s why we wake 
and look out—no guarantees
in this life.

But some bonuses, like morning,
like right now, like noon,
like evening.
~ William Stafford “Yes” from The Way It Is: New and Selected Poems

Side by side, their faces blurred,   
The earl and countess lie in stone,   
Their proper habits vaguely shown   
As jointed armour, stiffened pleat,   
And that faint hint of the absurd—   
The little dogs under their feet.

Such plainness of the pre-baroque 
Hardly involves the eye, until
It meets his left-hand gauntlet, still   
Clasped empty in the other; and   
One sees, with a sharp tender shock,   
His hand withdrawn, holding her hand.

They would not think to lie so long.   
Such faithfulness in effigy
Was just a detail friends would see:
A sculptor’s sweet commissioned grace   
Thrown off in helping to prolong   
The Latin names around the base.

They would not guess how early in
Their supine stationary voyage
The air would change to soundless damage,   
Turn the old tenantry away;
How soon succeeding eyes begin
To look, not read. Rigidly they

Persisted, linked, through lengths and breadths   
Of time. Snow fell, undated. Light
Each summer thronged the glass. A bright   
Litter of birdcalls strewed the same
Bone-riddled ground. And up the paths   
The endless altered people came,

Washing at their identity.   
Now, helpless in the hollow of   
An unarmorial age, a trough
Of smoke in slow suspended skeins
Above their scrap of history,   
Only an attitude remains:

Time has transfigured them into   
Untruth. The stone fidelity
They hardly meant has come to be   
Their final blazon, and to prove   
Our almost-instinct almost true:   
What will survive of us is love.
~Philip Larkin “An Arundel Tomb”

You can’t tell when strange things with meaning
will happen. I’m [still] here writing it down
just the way it was.

“You don’t have to prove anything,” my mother said.
“Just be ready for what God sends.”
I listened and put my hand
out in the sun again.

It was all easy.
~William Stafford – Lines written the morning before he died at age 79

We wake each morning, not knowing what to expect of the day.
So much sadness, the news of suffering, of unimaginable tragedies.

How do we ready ourselves for what is sent for us to endure?

This is how:
right now,
there is morning, there is noon, there is evening.
And there will always be Love
as we sleep
and as we wake.
God holds our hand to keep us from getting lost.

Lyrics by Arthur Sullivan:
No star is o’er the lake, its pale watch keeping,
The moon is half awake, through grey mist creeping.
The last red leaves fall round the porch of roses,
The clock has ceased to sound.
The long day closes.

Sit by the silent hearth in calm endeavour,
To count the sound of mirth, now dumb forever.
Heed not how hope believes and fate disposes:
Shadow is round the eaves.
The long day closes.

The lighted windows dim are fading slowly.
The fire that was so trim now quivers lowly.
Go to the dreamless bed where grief reposes.
Thy book of toil is read.
The long day closes.

Astonishingly Free

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It’s an early summer day, going to be a hot one.
I’m away from home, I’m working; the sky is solidly blue
with just a chalk smear of clouds. So why this melancholy?
Why these blues? Nothing I’ve done seems to matter; I
could leave tomorrow and no one would notice, that’s how
invisible I feel. But look, there’s a pair of cardinals
on the weathered table, pecking at sunflower seeds
which I’ve brought from home. They don’t seem
particularly grateful. Neither does the sky, no matter
how I transcribe it. I wanted to do more in this life,
not the elusive prizes, but poems that astonish. A big flashy jay
lands on the table, scattering seeds and smaller birds.
They regroup, continue to hunt and peck on the lawn.
~Barbara Crooker, “Melancholia” from Some Glad Morning

photo by Josh Scholten

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the green heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.
~Wendell Berry “The Peace of Wild Things” from The Selected Poems of Wendell Berry

Three years ago, I laid awake thinking about our son and his family’s ten hour overnight flight from Tokyo in progress. Our two young grandchildren were arriving here after 30 months of pandemic separation – to them, we were just faces on a screen.

They said a sorrowful sayonara to their grandparents and family there, arriving here to a new life thanks to my daughter-in-law’s newly issued green card after two years of waiting, new jobs, new language, new everything, with all their worldly belongings in suitcases.

From the largest city in the world to our little corner of the middle of nowhere.

Over the past three years,
I have watched them discover for themselves
the joys and sorrows of this part of the world.
When I look at things through their eyes,
I am reminded of the light beyond the darkness I fear,
there is peace amid the chaos,
there is a smile behind the tears,
there is stillness within the noisiness
there is rest despite our restlessness,
there is grace as we who are older give way to the younger.

I have given up on astonishing others.
Instead, astonishing is happening all around me;
I need only be a witness.

Measure me, sky!
    Tell me I reach by a song
Nearer the stars;
    I have been little so long.

Weigh me, high wind!
    What will your wild scales record?
Profit of pain,
    Joy by the weight of a word.

Horizon, reach out!
    Catch at my hands, stretch me taut,
Rim of the world:
    Widen my eyes by a thought.

Sky, be my depth,
    Wind, be my width and my height,
World, my heart’s span;
    Loveliness, wings for my flight.
~Leonora Speyer “Measure Me, Sky”

Best of Barnstorming Photos: Winter/Spring 2025

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A Shimmering Evening Chorus

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Evening, and all the birds
In a chorus of shimmering sound
Are easing their hearts of joy
For miles around.

The air is blue and sweet,
The few first stars are white,–
Oh let me like the birds
Sing before night.
~Sara Teasdale “Dusk in June”

I am half agony, half hope…
~Jane Austen from Persuasion

Sure on this shining night
Of star made shadows round,
Kindness must watch for me
This side the ground. 
The late year lies down the north.
All is healed, all is health.
High summer holds the earth. 
Hearts all whole.
Sure on this shining night I weep for wonder
wand’ring far alone
Of shadows on the stars.
~James Agee “Sure on this Shining Night”

This time of uncertainty holds the earth captive;
our hearts fearful of war in a shimmering summer dusk.

I weep for wonder in hope for a healing peace,
at this time, at this place, singing under these stars.

May we rest assured, on another shining night,
sometime, we know not when, we know not how,
we will lay down arms and live without threat of war.

Amen and Amen.

June Trembling Like a Butterfly

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Green was the silence, wet was the light
the month of June trembled like a butterfly
~Pablo Neruda from “Sonnet XL”

Why do we bother with the rest of the day,
the swale of the afternoon,
the sudden dip into evening,
then night with his notorious perfumes,
his many-pointed stars?

This is the best—
throwing off the light covers,
feet on the cold floor,
and buzzing around the house on espresso—
maybe a splash of water on the face,
a palmful of vitamins—

but mostly buzzing around the house on espresso,
dictionary and atlas open on the rug,
the typewriter waiting for the key of the head,
a cello on the radio,
and, if necessary, the windows—
trees fifty, a hundred years old
out there,
heavy clouds on the way
and the lawn steaming like a horse
in the early morning.
~Billy Collins “Morning”

We are now four days into summer but aside from the date on the calendar, it would be difficult to prove otherwise.  After a dry stretch of warm late spring weather, it is now unseasonably cool, the skies stony gray, the rivers running full and fast, the ground peppered with puddles. Rain has fallen at night, hiding behind the cover of darkness as if ashamed of itself.  

As it should be.

What all this moisture will yield is acres and acres of towering grass growth, more grass than imaginable, more grass than we can keep mowed,  burying the horses up to their backs as they dive head long into the pasture. The Haflingers don’t need to lower their necks to graze,  choosing instead to simply strip off the ripe tops of the grasses as they forge paths through five foot forage. It is like children at a birthday party swiping the frosting off cupcake after cupcake, licking their fingers as they go. Instead of icing, the horses’ muzzles are smeared with dandelion fluff,  grass seed and buttercup petals.

In the northwest, June can tend to shroud its promise of longer days under clouds. Outdoor weddings brace for rain and wind with a supply of umbrellas, graduation potlucks are served in the garage and Fourth of July picnics stay safely under cover. There is a wary anticipation of solstice as it signals the slow inexorable return of darkness from which we have barely recovered.

So I tremble as I too splash through the squishiness of late June,  quivering like a wet butterfly emerging from its cocoon ready to unfurl its wings to dry, but unsure how to fly and uncertain of the new world that awaits.  In fact the dark empty cocoon can look mighty inviting on a rainy June night. If I could manage to squeeze myself back in, it might be worth a try.

After all, there is no place like home.

Finding a Fermata

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In science we have been reading only the notes to a poem:
in Christianity we find the poem itself.
~C.S. Lewis from Miracles

Science itself fails
to love us when we’re alone,
to feed us when we’re starving,
to lead us to water when we’re thirsty,
to grasp the hand of the dying,
to give hope to the weak and afraid,
to become sacrifice for our sin,
to offer us everlasting forgiveness and grace.

Science is only one of God’s footnotes within His poetic Word,
a well-timed fermata allowing His creation to pause and listen,
reflecting for a moment on the symphony of His redeeming Work.

A Soft Landscape

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Now have come the shining days
When field and wood are robed anew,
And o’er the world a silver haze
Mingles the emerald with the blue.

Summer now doth clothe the land
In garments free from spot or stain—
The lustrous leaves, the hills untanned,
The vivid meads, the glaucous grain.

The day looks new, a coin unworn,
Freshly stamped in heavenly mint;
The sky keeps on its look of morn;
Of age and death there is no hint.

How soft the landscape near and far!
A shining veil the trees infold;
The day remembers moon and star;
A silver lining hath its gold.

Again I see the clover bloom,
And wade in grasses lush and sweet;
Again has vanished all my gloom
With daisies smiling at my feet.

Again from out the garden hives
The exodus of frenzied bees;
The humming cyclone onward drives,
Or finds repose amid the trees.

At dawn the river seems a shade—
A liquid shadow deep as space;
But when the sun the mist has laid,
A diamond shower smites its face.

The season’s tide now nears its height,
And gives to earth an aspect new;
Now every shoal is hid from sight,
With current fresh as morning dew.
~John Burroughs “June’s Coming”

Out of the deep and the dark,
A sparkling mystery, a shape,
Something perfect,
Comes like the stir of day:
One whose breath is a fragrance,
One whose eyes reveal the road to stars,
The wind in his countenance,
The glory of heaven upon his back.
He steps like a vision hung in air,
Diffusing the passion of eternity;
His abode is the sunlight of morn,
The music of eve his speech:
In his sight,
One shall turn from the dust of the grave,
And move upward to the woodland.
~Yone Noguchi “The Poet”

Each month is special in its own way:  I tend to favor April and October for how the light plays on the landscape during transitional times — a residual of what has been, with a hint of what lies ahead.

Then there is June.  Dear, gentle, abundant and overwhelming June.  Nothing is dried up, there is such a rich feeling of ascension into lushness of summer with an “out of school” attitude, even if someone like me has graduated long ago.

And the light, and the birdsong and the dew and the greens — such vivid verdant greens. The stir of the day stirs my heart…

As lovely as June is, 30 days is more than plenty or I would become helplessly saturated. Then I can be released from my sated stupor to wistfully hunger for June for 335 more.

Rising Up From the Darkness

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My father taught me how to eat breakfast
those mornings when it was my turn to help
him milk the cows. I loved rising up from

the darkness and coming quietly down
the stairs while the others were still sleeping.
I’d take a bowl from the cupboard, a spoon

from the drawer, and slip into the pantry
where he was already eating spoonfuls
of cornflakes covered with mashed strawberries

from our own strawberry fields forever.
Didn’t talk much—except to mention how
good the strawberries tasted or the way

those clouds hung over the hay barn roof.
Simple—that’s how we started up the day.
~Joyce Sutphen, “Breakfast” from First Words, Red Dragonfly.

By the time I was four years old, my family owned several Guernsey and Jersey dairy cows my father milked by hand twice a day. My mother pasteurized the milk on our wood stove and we grew up drinking the best milk on earth, as well as enjoying home-made butter and ice cream.

One of my fondest early memories is getting up early with my dad, before he needed to be at school teaching FFA agriculture students (Future Farmers of America). I would eat breakfast with him and then walk out into the foggy fall mornings with our dog to bring in the cows for milking. He would boost me up on top of a very bony-backed chestnut and white patchwork cow while he washed her udder and set to work milking.

I would sometimes sing songs from up there on my perch and my dad would whistle since he didn’t sing.

I can still hear the rhythmic sound of the milk squirting into the stainless steel bucket – the high-pitched metallic whoosh initially and then a more gurgling low wet sound as the bucket filled up. I can see my dad’s capped forehead resting against the flank of the cow as he leaned into the muscular work of squeezing the udder teats, each in turn. I can hear the cow’s chewing her breakfast of alfalfa and grain as I balanced on her prominent spine feeling her smooth hair over her ribs. The barn cats circulated around us, mewing, attracted by the warm milky fragrance in the air.

Those were preciously simple starts to the day for me and my father, whose thoughts he didn’t articulate nor I could ever quite discern. But I did know I wasn’t only his daughter on mornings like that – I was one of his future farmers of America he dedicated his life to teaching.

Dad, even without you saying much, those were mornings when my every sense was awakened. I’ve never forgotten that- the best start to the day.

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Like Light and Cloud Shadows

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…you mustn’t be frightened …
if a sadness rises in front of you,
larger than any you have ever seen;
if an anxiety, like light and cloud-shadows,
moves over your hands and over everything you do.
You must realize that something is happening to you,
that life has not forgotten you,
that it holds you in its hand and will not let you fall.
Why do you want to shut out of your life any uneasiness,
any misery, any depression, since after all
you don’t know what work these conditions are doing inside you?
~Rainer Maria Rilke from Letters to a Young Poet

…difficulties are magnified out of all proportion
simply by fear and anxiety.
From the moment we wake until we fall asleep
we must commend other people wholly and unreservedly to God and leave them in his hands,
and transform our anxiety for them into prayers on their behalf: 
With sorrow and with grief…
God will not be distracted.
~Dietrich Bonhoeffer in Letters from Prison

During my decades as a primary care physician for a university health center, my clinic days were often filled with young adults who were so consumed by anxiety they were immobilized in their ability to move forward through life’s inevitable obstacles and difficulties. They were so stuck in overwhelming feelings, they couldn’t sleep or eat or think clearly. They tended to self-medicate, self-injure and self-hate. Unable to nurture themselves or others, they withered like a flower without roots deep enough to reach the vast reservoir untapped beneath them.  In epidemic numbers, some decide to die, even before life really has fully begun for them.

My role was to help find healing solutions, whether it was counseling therapy, a break from school, or a medicine that may give some form of relief. 

My heart knows the ultimate answer is not as simple as choosing the right prescription – light and cloud shadows differ for each person – it can feel like the sun is blocked forever, all that is left is rain and snow and gray.

I too have known anxiety and how it can distort every thought.

We who are anxious can depend upon a Creator who is not distracted from His care for us even if we have turned away in our worry and sorrow, unable to look past our own eyelashes. 

Like a thirsty withering plant, we need to reach higher and deeper: asking for help and support, working through solutions with those helpers, acknowledging there exists a healing power greater than ourselves.

So we are called to pray for ourselves and for others. Self compassion and caring for others can disable anxiety and fear by transforming it to growth, gratitude and grace.  

No longer withering, we just might bloom.

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