The mind’s bright chambers, life unlocks
Each summer with the hollyhocks.
~Edgar Guest from “Hollyhocks”
Category: Remembrance
Parables of Sun Light
But all the gardens
Of spring and summer were blooming in the tall tales
Beyond the border and under the lark full cloud.
There could I marvel
My birthday
Away but the weather turned around.
It turned away from the blithe country
And down the other air and the blue altered sky
Streamed again a wonder of summer
With apples
Pears and red currants
And I saw in the turning so clearly a child’s
Forgotten mornings when he walked with his mother
Through the parables
Of sun light
And the legends of the green chapels
…O may my heart’s truth
Still be sung
On this high hill in a year’s turning.
~Dylan Thomas from “Poem in October”
~Dylan Thomas from “Poem in October”
Ache of Memory
Only be it understood,
It shall be no trespassing
If I come again some spring
In the grey disguise of years,
Seeking ache of memory here.
~Robert Frost from “On the Sale of My Farm”
A Moment of Balance
What follows the light is what precedes it:
the moment of balance, of dark equivalence.
But tonight we sit in the garden in our canvas chairs
so late into the evening –
why should we look either forward or backwards?
Why should we be forced to remember:
it is in our blood, this knowledge.
Shortness of the days; darkness, coldness of winter.
It is in our blood and bones; it is in our history.
It takes a genius to forget these things.
~Louise Glück from “Solstice”
The Water’s Just Fine
Reblogging as my Father’s Day tradition. My father departed this soil nearly 19 years ago, having completed umpteen “projects” in his spare time. This was undoubtedly the most remarkable. He dove right in to whatever he decided to accomplish.
Here’s to you, Dad. The water’s still fine.
In acknowledgment of Father’s Day, I pull out a particular photo album that chronicles my father’s 1968 backyard project. This was no ordinary project, but like every other project he took on, it was accomplished during the daylight hours after he got home from his desk job and then consumed most of his weekend waking hours. He had been dreaming it up for a number of years, and then one day, grabbed a shovel and simply got started and didn’t quit until it was finished.
He was determined to build a full size swimming pool, by himself, with his own two hands. He did use our little Farmall Cub tractor to blade away the first layer of topsoil, but the rest of the digging was by the shovel-full. He wanted a kidney shaped pool rather than a rectangular one, so he soaked the wooden forms in water to form the graceful curves. The cement was poured by a cement truck, but the sidewalks were all self-mixed in our own little cement mixer that ran off a small engine. The tile that lined the top of the pool was all hand grouted and placed, square by square. The pumphouse/changing room was built alongside.
I was 14 that summer, not truly understanding how extraordinary an effort this was, but simply accepting it as another “dad” project like any other he finished through sheer will, stubbornness and a desire to go on to the next challenge. Now, 45 years later, as an adult who is plum tired at the end of an office/clinic work day, I marvel at his energy putting in another four or five hours of physical labor when he came home at night. No wonder he never suffered from insomnia.
Once the pool was declared finished, a hose ran water for several days, and it took 2 more days to heat it up to a temperature that was survivable. Then my dad took the first dive in.
Once he had taken that first dive, he was happy. He swam every once in awhile, but was soon onto another project (reconstructing a steel walled gas station that arrived on our farm in piles of panels on the back of a flat bed truck, so that he could have a full size “shop” to work on indoor projects during the winter). It was sufficient for him to just to be able to say he had done it himself.
So as I study the look on my father’s face in these photos, I am startled to see my self looking back at me, like a reflection in the water. I now realize determination and utter stubbornness can manifest in different ways. I have no mechanical skills whatsoever, but like my father, I always have a dream I’m pursuing, and I keep at it until it is accomplished.
Thanks to my dad for showing me how to dive right into life. The water’s fine.
Farther from Heaven
It is dry, hazy June weather.
We are more of the earth,
farther from heaven these days.
I pray that the life of this spring and summer
may ever lie fair in my memory.~Henry David Thoreau
One Mind Between Them
They sit together on the porch, the dark
Almost fallen, the house behind them dark.
Their supper done with, they have washed and dried
The dishes–only two plates now, two glasses,
Two knives, two forks, two spoons–small work for two.
She sits with her hands folded in her lap,
At rest. He smokes his pipe. They do not speak,
And when they speak at last it is to say
What each one knows the other knows. They have
One mind between them, now, that finally
For all its knowing will not exactly know
Which one goes first through the dark doorway, bidding
Goodnight, and which sits on a while alone.
~Wendell Berry from “A Timbered Choir”
~Wendell Berry from “A Timbered Choir”
To Give Life’s Best
For Memorial Day 2014, as the sky cannot stop raining tears for the losses suffered by a few to secure a future for many:
In great deeds, something abides.
On great fields, something stays.
Forms change and pass;
bodies disappear;
but spirits linger, to consecrate ground for the vision-place of souls.
And reverent men and women from afar,
and generations that know us not and that we know not of,
heart-drawn to see where and by whom great things were suffered and done for them,
shall come to this deathless field,
to ponder and dream;
and lo! the shadow of a mighty presence shall wrap them in its bosom,
and the power of the vision pass into their souls.
This is the great reward of service.
To live, far out and on, in the life of others;
this is the mystery of the Christ,
–to give life’s best for such high sake
that it shall be found again unto life eternal.
~Major-General Joshua Chamberlain at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania 1889
For a Day at the Cemeteries
I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering;
what is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness?
When it’s over, I want to say: all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was a bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.
When it’s over, I don’t want to wonder
if I have made of my life something particular, and real.
I don’t want to find myself sighing and frightened
or full of argument.
I don’t want to end up simply having visited this world.
~Mary Oliver from “When Death Comes”
Going Gentle Into That Good Night
Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
~Dylan Thomas
~Dylan Thomas
This pup came to us almost 13 years ago through a family friend, as we were mourning the death of Dan’s father, Tom, after a series of strokes. Tom had rallied with amazing emotional strength against his growing weakness, until the final event took him quickly from us over a few short hours. At home on the farm, we were watching a similar decline in our 16 year old Belgian Tervuren “Tango” who was deaf, blind and increasingly forgetful. Our farm desperately needed the invigoration of a young vital life.
So Dylan Thomas, Welsh Cardigan Corgi puppy, moved in. He was a most unusual color, with spotted eyes that laughed and mused at life. He loved to cuddle and spent plenty of time in our kids’ laps. When Tango’s time came after a sudden paralyzing stroke, as I held a flashlight for a young vet as she searched for a vein to administer the final medication outside on a freezing November night, I was very grateful we had Dylan’s calm face, strong back and short legs to carry us through another death.
He was asked to carry us again and again. When he and a new dog to our farm went to the vet on the same day to be neutered, Dylan came home alone when his good buddy died from a devastating anesthetic reaction. He watched another dog arrive as a pup and die a decade later of a rare muscle cancer. Alone, Dylan would howl pitifully in the night. He got grayer, barked more the deafer he grew, and moved through farm chores with somber deliberateness.
When young Sam arrived two years ago, Dylan was obviously ambivalent about training up another pup. He would put up with Sam’s lavishing kisses all over his face, but would never relinquish a bone or a preferred bed. Sam was company but too much a bundle of energy to cuddle with, just a young whippersnapper who didn’t understand the serious business of life as a farm dog.
Dylan watched through his spotted eyes as our children grew up, got busier and moved away. He watched them return for visits, accompanied them for walks to the top of the hill, but knew they would soon depart again to places far away. Dylan’s world was a pen that felt like all the home he needed. His farm, his family and his food were all he wanted.
He decided two weeks ago not to get up when I went to feed him in the morning. He lay flat on the grass, weak, looking at me through those eyes as I petted and stroked his deaf ears, unable to hear any words of reassurance I spoke. Our daughter was taking her semester finals at college in Chicago and I reluctantly let her know that I thought Dylan was not long for this world. She asked if there was any way he would last until she arrived home on May 14 for a brief visit and I said it simply wasn’t possible. That evening, anticipating that I was about to call the vet to come to the farm, Dylan struggled to his feet, clearly not ready to check out. He was willing to take some special treats from my hand and decided that it was worth sticking around if it meant fresh steak meat and farm eggs to eat.
Remarkably, he grew strong enough to come to the barn again for chores, raid the cat food dish and even climb the hill one last time two nights ago. He was clearly hanging on, raging against the dying of the light, until May 14, the morning of Lea’s arrival back home, when he wouldn’t accept the special treats from me any more. When she arrived late that evening and came to say hello to him, it was clearly goodbye. His eyes were fading, his strength waning. But he had hung on in an old age that burned and raved. He had made sure one of his kids was home so he could now sleep sound.
Yesterday, he didn’t get up in the morning, and laid quietly in his little house, watching the farm around him, the light fading from his eyes. He napped in the warm spring afternoon and didn’t wake back up. The light had flown into the skies above.
Many of us tend to measure our lives in dogs. Dylan was the one who took us from a full house of young growing children to a house that longs for those arms to return home every once in awhile. Dylan clearly waited for the arms he loved to come home and then he was ready to let go, going gently, oh so gently, into that very good night.
Barnstorming 