A poem is a spider web Spun with words of wonder, Woven lace held in place By whispers made of thunder. ~Charles Ghigna “A Poem is a Spider Web”
Silk-thin silver strings woven cleverly into a lair, An intricate entwining of divinest thread… Like strands of magic worked upon the air, The spider spins his enchanted web – His home so eerily, spiraling spreads.
His gossamer so rigid, yet lighter than mist, And like an eight-legged sorcerer – a wizard blest, His lace, like a spell, he conjures and knits; I witnessed such wild ingenuity wrought and finessed, Watching the spider weave a dream from his web. ~Jonathan Platt“A Spider’s Web”
The spider, dropping down from twig, Unfolds a plan of her devising, A thin premeditated rig To use in rising. And all that journey down through space, In cool descent and loyal hearted, She spins a ladder to the place From where she started. Thus I, gone forth as spiders do In spider’s web a truth discerning, Attach one silken thread to you For my returning. ~E.B. White “Natural History” (written to his wife as a love letter in 1929)
I wander our barnyard, studying the complexities of web design, marveling at a tiny creature’s woven lace of connection using the slenderest thread.
I don’t have eight legs, nor make silk, yet I whisper and weave my words and pictures from this corner of the Web, waiting patiently for the shimmer of connection: perhaps a rumbling thunder might be heard.
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It was like a church to me. I entered it on soft foot, Breath held like a cap in the hand. It was quiet. What God was there made himself felt, Not listened to, in clean colours That brought a moistening of the eye, In movement of the wind over grass.
There were no prayers said. But stillness Of the heart’s passions — that was praise Enough; and the mind’s cession Of its kingdom. I walked on, Simple and poor, while the air crumbled And broke on me generously as bread. ~R.S. Thomas “The Moor”
A strange empty day. I did not feel well, lay around…. I always forget how important the empty days are, how important it may be sometimes not to expect to produce anything, even a few lines in a journal. I am still pursued by a neurosis about work inherited from my father. A day where one has not pushed oneself to the limit seems a damaged damaging day, a sinful day. Not so! The most valuable thing we can do for the psyche, occasionally, is to let it rest, wander, live in the changing light of a room, not try to be or do anything whatever. Tonight I do feel in a state of grace, limbered up, less strained. ~May Sarton from Journal of a Solitude (January 18, 1971 entry)
Once in your life you pass Through a place so pure It becomes tainted even By your regard, a space Of trees and air where Dusk comes as perfect ripeness. Here the only sounds are Sighs of rain and snow, Small rustlings of plants As they unwrap in twilight. This is where you will go At last when coldness comes. It is something you realize When you first see it, But instantly forget. At the end of your life You remember and dwell in Its faultless light forever. ~Paul Zimmer “The Place” from Crossing to Sunlight Revisited
My family members and I have had weeks of feeling just on the verge of conquering the latest viral upper respiratory illness, but then would find ourselves welcoming the next cold as if it were a long lost friend.
I’m discouraged by ongoing fatigue and need for isolation that has accompanied these illnesses, due to our persistent sneezes and coughs.
All this has forced me to rest, take a breath and feel lucky to be alive, even if feeling unwell. I know too many folks who are dealing with much greater burdens.
Indeed, this morning brought a moment of grace for me. I witnessed manna falling from the sky.
Often times a sunrise is as plain and gray as I am, but at times, it is fire lit from above and beneath, igniting and transforming the sky, completely overwhelming me.
I was swept away, transfixed by colors and swirls and shadows, forever grateful to be fed by such heavenly bread broken over my head.
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What heart could have thought you?— Past our devisal (O filigree petal!) Fashioned so purely, Fragilely, surely, From what Paradisal Imagineless metal, Too costly for cost? Who hammered you, wrought you, From argentine vapour?— “God was my shaper. Passing surmisal, He hammered, He wrought me, From curled silver vapour, To lust of His mind;— Thou could’st not have thought me! So purely, so palely, Tinily, surely, Mightily, frailly, Insculped and embossed, With His hammer of wind, And His graver of frost.“ ~Francis Thompson “To a Snowflake”
photo by Alexay Kljatov, pbs.org
photo by Alexay Kljatov, pbs.org
I wish one could press snowflakes in a book like flowers. ~James Schuyler from “February 13, 1975” in Collected Poems
Each snowflake falls alone, settling in together to create sculptures in communal effort. And each is created as a singular masterpiece itself.
We too, as the created, are like each snowflake. Together we change the world, sometimes for better, too often for worse. But each of us have come from heaven uniquely designed and purposed, preciously shaped, hammered, wrought and preserved for eternity through God’s loving sacrifice.
Without God embossed on our surface, we would melt into oblivion between the pages of history.
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Low clouds hang on the mountain. The forest is filled with fog. A short distance away the Giant trees recede and grow Dim. Two hundred paces and They are invisible. All Day the fog curdles and drifts. The cries of the birds are loud. They sound frightened and cold. Hour By hour it grows colder. Just before sunset the clouds Drop down the mountainside. Long Shreds and tatters of fog flow Swiftly away between the Trees. Now the valley below Is filled with clouds like clotted Cream and over them the sun Sets, yellow in a sky full Of purple feathers. After dark A wind rises and breaks branches From the trees and howls in the Treetops and then suddenly Is still. Late at night I wake And look out of the tent. The Clouds are rushing across the Sky and through them is tumbling The thin waning moon. Later All is quiet except for A faint whispering. I look Out. Great flakes of wet snow are Falling. Snowflakes are falling Into the dark flames of the Dying fire. In the morning the Pine boughs are sagging with snow, And the dogwood blossoms are Frozen, and the tender young Purple and citron oak leaves. ~Kenneth Rexroth “Snow” from The Complete Poems of Kenneth Rexroth
Snow and then freezing rain fell for hours yesterday so we remain cloaked and iced and drifted this morning
~we appear more pristine than we are_
Underneath this chilly blanket we’re barely presentable, sleep-deprived, wrinkled and worn, all mud and mildew beneath.
~yet a thaw is coming~
Spring will rise from its snowy bed, lit from an inner fire that never burns out.
Through clouds like ashes from a burning bush, we turn aside to see God’s glory; our eyes carefully covered from the bright glaze of snow and ice.
We feel His flash of life as He passes by.
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I caught this morning morning’s minion, king- dom of daylight’s dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon, in his riding Of the rolling level underneath him steady air, and striding High there, how he rung upon the rein of a wimpling wing In his ecstasy! then off, off forth on swing, As a skate’s heel sweeps smooth on a bow-bend: the hurl and gliding Rebuffed the big wind. My heart in hiding Stirred for a bird, – the achieve of, the mastery of the thing.
Brute beauty and valour and act, oh, air, pride, plume, here Buckle! AND the fire that breaks from thee then, a billion Times told lovelier, more dangerous, O my chevalier!
No wonder of it: shéer plód makes plough down sillion Shine, and blue-bleak embers, ah my dear, Fall, gall themselves, and gash gold-vermilion. ~Gerard Manley Hopkins “The Windhover”
Did you too see it, drifting, all night, on the black river? Did you see it in the morning, rising into the silvery air – An armful of white blossoms, A perfect commotion of silk and linen as it leaned into the bondage of its wings; a snowbank, a bank of lilies, Biting the air with its black beak? Did you hear it, fluting and whistling A shrill dark music – like the rain pelting the trees – like a waterfall Knifing down the black ledges? And did you see it, finally, just under the clouds – A white cross Streaming across the sky, its feet Like black leaves, its wings Like the stretching light of the river?And did you feel it, in your heart, how it pertained to everything? And have you too finally figured out what beauty is for? And have you changed your life? ~Mary Oliver from “The Swan”
I hold my heart in hiding, trying to protect that tender core of who I am from being pierced and shredded by the slings and arrows of every day life. It can be a bruising and bumpy ride.
Yet to live fully, as I am created to live, I must fling myself into the open, wimpling wings spread, the wind holding me up, hovering and ready to soar.
To stay aloft, I must change as the wind changes around me.
I take my chances, knowing the fall will come. My wounds shall be healed, even as they bleed.
There is no lack of wonder. So stirred. So much beauty to behold. So much heart to take out of hiding and share freely, no matter the buffeting.
Ah… Ah, my dear.
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The cold has the philosophical value of reminding men that the universe does not love us…cold is our ancient companion. To return back indoors after exposure to the bitter, inimical, implacable cold is to experience gratitude for the shelters of civilization, for the islands of warmth that life creates. ~John Updike from “The Cold”in Winter: A Spiritual Biography of the Season
Some say the world will end in fire, Some say in ice. From what I’ve tasted of desire I hold with those who favor fire. But if it had to perish twice, I think I know enough of hate To say that for destruction ice Is also great And would suffice. ~Robert Frost “Fire and Ice“
One day, the scientists tell us, every star in the universe will burn out, the galaxies gradually blackening until
The last light flares and falls returning all to darkness where it will remain until the end of what we have come
to think of as time. But even in the dark, time would go on, bold in its black cloak, no shade, no shadow,
only the onward motion of movement, which is what time, if it exists at all, really is: the absence of reversal, the sheer
impossibility of that final fire dying into itself, dragging the day deep into what it no longer is,
bowing only to rise into the other, into a shining the heavens were commanded to host, the entire
always poised between the gravity of upward and downward, like the energy of a star itself constantly balanced between
its weight straining to crush its core and the heat of that same core heaving it outward, as though what destroys
redeems, what collapses also radiates, not unlike this life, Love, which we are traveling through at such
an astonishing speed, entire galaxies racing past, universes, it as if we are watching time itself drift
into the cosmos, like a spinning wall of images alrealdy gone, and I realize most of what we know
we can’t see, like the birdsong overheard or the women in China building iPhones or the men picking
strawberries in the early dawn or even sleeping sons in the other room who will wake up and ask
for their light sabers. Death will come for us so fast we will never be able to outrun it,
no matter how fast we travel or how heavily we arm ourselves against the invisible,
which is what I’m thinking, Love, even though the iron in the blood that keeps you alive was born from a hard
star-death somewhere in the past that is also the future, and what I mean is to say that I am so lucky
to be living with you in this brief moment of light before everything goes dark. ~Dean Rader“Still Life with Gratitude”
This week has been a good reminder of our helplessness and need for one another in the face of single digit temperatures with sub-zero windchills.
This is the kind of cold that tries men’s souls and frail bodies. This is “kill the bugs and the allergens” cold tries to balance out the ecosystem as well as our internal emotional and physical thermostats.
Chill like this descends unbidden from the Arctic, blasting through the thickest layers of clothing, sneaking through drafty doors and windows, and freezing pipes not left dripping. It leaves no one untouched and unbitten with universal freezer burn.
A bitter cold snap ensures even the most determined unhoused “living in the woods” individualists must become companionable or freeze to death, necessitating temporary shelter indoors with others for survival.
It sometimes means forced companionship with those we would ordinarily avoid, with whom we have little in common, with whom we disagree and even quarrel, with whom sharing a hug or snuggling for warmth would be unimaginable.
Our whole nation is in just such a temperamental and political cold snap today, so terribly and bitterly divided. If we don’t come in out of the cold, we each will perish alone. It is time to be grateful we have each other during these difficult times, ancient and uneasy companions that we are.
At least we might generate some heat by civilly discussing the issues we all face. The risk is letting disagreements get so out of control that nothing is left but smoke and ashes from the incineration.
Somewhere there must be middle ground: perhaps we can share sanctuary from the bitter cold through the warmth of a mutually well-tended and companionable hearth.
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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 1885letter 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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torrent rain driven aslant against the barn’s side
swollen Yamhill Creek furious with water
another V of geese over the farm this morning
the plowed field soggy underfoot fixed on distant May
a hawk hung in chill October air like a narrow-winged thought. ~Ed Higgins, “Anticipating Winter” from Near Truth Only
Field with Plowing Farmers by Vincent Van Gogh
Bleak winter weather is predicted to arrive nearly everywhere this week, with subzero temperatures, wind chills and blizzards.
I’m really not mentally ready for this coming cold, but an Arctic outflow waits for no one and certainly not for me.
The gulls, geese and swans somehow endure the chill, gleaning our neighbors’ muddy corn stalk fields, while overhead, eagles and hawks float on the wind currents, scanning for prey.
As I warm up in the house after barn chores, I turn the calendar pages, looking ahead to March. I know better than to try to rush time when each freezing day is precious and fleeting. I still try.
Like the birds sticking it out through winter here, the snowdrops are sprouting from under the leaf cover, as they do each January. They, like me, trust that spring is only around the corner.
So we endure what we must now with the knowledge of what comes next.
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Thank you for visiting and sharing this page often, with hearts open to the ever-changing times and cycling of the seasons.
Your encouragement and your financial support to keep this page ad-free pushes me to keep looking for beauty in words and images to share with you each day.
Here’s to this year handing off the hours, weeks, and months to the next, one full of blessings yet to be discovered…
New Year’s Eve sunrise – 12/31/23
Previous collections of “Best of Barnstorming” photos:
Earth’s crammed with heaven, and every common bush afire with God ~Elizabeth Barrett Browning from “Aurora Leigh”
(Jesus said) I have come to bring fire on the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled! Luke 12:49
It is difficult to undo our own damage… It is hard to desecrate a grove and change your mind. The very holy mountains are keeping mum. We doused the burning bush and cannot rekindle it; we are lighting matches in vain under every green tree. ~Annie Dillard from Teaching a Stone to Talk
When I drink in the stars and upward sink into the theater your words have wrought, I touch unfelt immensity and think— like Grandma used to pause in patient thought before an ordinary flower, awed by intricacies hidden in plain view, then say, You didn’t have to do that, God!— Surely a smaller universe would do!
But you have walled us in with open seas unconquerable, wild with distant shores whose raging dawns are but your filigree across our vaulted skies. This art of yours, what Grandma held and I behold, these flames, frame truth which awes us more: You know our names. ~Michael Stalcup “The Shallows”
I need to turn aside and look, to see, as if for the first and last time, the kindled fire that illuminates even the darkest day and never dies away.
We are invited by name, by no less than God Himself, through the burning bush that is never consumed: to shed our shoes, to walk barefoot and vulnerable, and approach the bright and burning dawn, even when it is the darkest midnight, even when it is a babe in a manger lighting a fire in each one of us.
Only then, only then can I say: “Here I am! Consume me!”
Advent 2023 theme …because of the tender mercy of our God, whereby the sunrise shall visit us from on high to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace. Luke 1: 78-79 from Zechariah’s Song
Within our darkest night, you kindle the fire that never dies away, that never dies away. Within our darkest night, you kindle the fire that never dies away, that never dies away. ~Taize
I sit beside the fire and think of all that I have seen of meadow-flowers and butterflies in summers that have been; Of yellow leaves and gossamer in autumns that there were, with morning mist and silver sun and wind upon my hair. I sit beside the fire and think of how the world will be when winter comes without a spring that I shall ever see. For still there are so many things that I have never seen: in every wood in every spring there is a different green. I sit beside the fire and think of people long ago and people who will see a world that I shall never know. But all the while I sit and think of times there were before, I listen for returning feet and voices at the door. ~J.R.R. Tolkien
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