Category: Seasons

Pursuing an Authentic Mess

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front door
back door

Leave the dishes.
Let the celery rot in the bottom drawer of the refrigerator
and an earthen scum harden on the kitchen floor.
Leave the black crumbs in the bottom of the toaster.
Throw the cracked bowl out and don’t patch the cup.
Don’t patch anything. Don’t mend. Buy safety pins.
Don’t even sew on a button.
Let the wind have its way, then the earth
that invades as dust and then the dead
foaming up in gray rolls underneath the couch.
Talk to them. Tell them they are welcome.
Don’t keep all the pieces of the puzzles
or the doll’s tiny shoes in pairs, don’t worry
who uses whose toothbrush or if anything
matches, at all.
Except one word to another. Or a thought.
Pursue the authentic—decide first
what is authentic,
then go after it with all your heart.
Your heart, that place
you don’t even think of cleaning out.
That closet stuffed with savage mementos.
Don’t sort the paper clips from screws from saved baby teeth
or worry if we’re all eating cereal for dinner
again. Don’t answer the telephone, ever,
or weep over anything at all that breaks.
Pink molds will grow within those sealed cartons
in the refrigerator. Accept new forms of life
and talk to the dead
who drift in through the screened windows, who collect
patiently on the tops of food jars and books.
Recycle the mail, don’t read it, don’t read anything
except what destroys
the insulation between yourself and your experience
or what pulls down or what strikes at or what shatters
this ruse you call necessity
~Louise Erdrich “Advice to Myself”

I am a messy person, coming from a long line of messy people. My paternal grandmother never had a clear kitchen counter, or a dining room table without piles of books and papers, spilling over with knickknacks and half-completed craft projects everywhere. I loved the chaos of her house since the messes left behind by her grandchildren weren’t as noticeable. I always felt at home, as if I was not being constantly monitored as a potential mess about to happen.

The other morning, I noticed a good-sized dust bunny on the kitchen floor and bent down to pick it up to toss in the trash can. To my surprise, it leaped away from my fingers!

It kept jumping away and as my eyes finally focused in the early morning light, I realized it wasn’t an escaping dust bunny, but a tree frog covered in dust fuzz from my less than tidy floor. It must have come in the house from the perpetually open front door and hidden under a piece of furniture, being transformed into a furry froggy Frankenstein.

I caught it and carried it outside into the morning dawn, setting it free into the chaos of the world outside, rather than coping inside with my insufficient housekeeping. No, I didn’t think to get a photo. Oh, well. Some things you just have to take on faith.

After all, my heart leaps and rejoices anytime we have multi-generational family under one roof and whether the house is clean is simply a secondary concern.

It actually is not a concern at all.

This mama’s heart carries love with each heartbeat. My worth is not in what I own or how pristine I keep things, but in the depth of my commitment to those who I am given the privilege to know and love.

Springing Right Out of the Frame

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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

Susquehanna by Jasper Francis Cropsey
On the Susquehanna by Jasper Frances Cropsey
Agnes Wallace by Robert Sivell
Hayfield–oil painting by Scott Prior http://www.scottpriorart.com
Shoshone Falls on the Snake River by Thomas Moran

The difficulty to think at the end of day,
When the shapeless shadow covers the sun
And nothing is left except light on your fur—

….and August the most peaceful month.

To be, in the grass, in the peacefullest time,
And to feel that the light is a rabbit-light
In which everything is meant for you
And nothing need be explained;

You become a self that fills the four corners of
night.
~Wallace Stevens, from “A Rabbit As King of the Ghosts”

Hare by David Stribbling
Young Hare painting by Albrecht Durer

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 others doing.

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
nor 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.

When the light is just right,
what I see in my mind
seems ready to spring right out of the frame.

The Dimmer Switch

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Hours and hours of taffy pulled and stretched
to the furthest reaches of neighborhood lawns, universe
of grasses cool and tickling, cushions
for our bodies somersaulting and cartwheeling, tagging
you’re it, while somewhere above us

the dimmer switch of Heaven would be turning
down to lavender rose and deeper rose, and then
the voices of the mothers streaming in
through the darkening air
to come home, come home.
~Andrea Potos “Summer, Childhood” from Her Joy Becomes

Once when we were playing
hide-and-seek and it was time
to go home, the rest gave up
on the game before it was done
and forgot I was still hiding.
I remained hidden as a matter
of honor until the moon rose.
~Galway Kinnell “Hide-and-Seek 1933” from Strong Is Your Hold.

We all long for home.

As the day wanes, the sky dims to pastels, the breezes pick up, I want to be called home: to warmth, to a good evening meal, to hugs and cozy bed.

No matter what excitement exists outside the four walls of home, I am eager for the comfort of finding my way home.

In the villages and towns all across Japan, there is a traditional folk song played daily in the early evening over loudspeakers in the streets – a reminder to the children of the neighborhood that it is time to give up their games and head home. They stream out of the parks and streets, each to their own house or apartment.

The song that thousands of U.S. soccer fans belted out after the World Cup soccer games was “Take me home, country roads.”

Last night, as I left an evening meeting at our local homeless mission shelter, I passed through the huge room housing over a hundred sleeping people on cots and floor mattresses. The overhead lights had been dimmed, each person safe, warm, fed, and welcome – no longer invisible and hidden away in the woods or alleys.

May we all know how it is to be welcomed home, when overwhelming darkness comes, knowing the Light always returns.

Come home, come home;
you who are weary come home…

Photo of children running home in Basque, France by William Albert Allard

On a Fine Golden Morning

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Whence comes Solace?—Not from seeing
What is doing, suffering, being,
Not from noting Life’s conditions,
Nor from heeding Time’s monitions;
But in cleaving to the Dream,
And in gazing at the gleam
Whereby gray things golden seem.

II

Thus do I this heyday, holding
Shadows but as lights unfolding,
As no specious show this moment
With its irised embowment;
But as nothing other than
Part of a benignant plan;
Proof that earth was made for man.
~Thomas Hardy “On a Fine Morning”

Whence comes Solace?
Cleaving to the dream, gazing at the gleam…

nothing other than
Part of a benignant plan;
Proof that earth was made for man.

I had to look up “benignant” – it is like being told a concerning tumor is “benign” – granting gracious kindness and beneficence in the midst of deep-seated worry.

A new lease on life.

We forget our original task of caring for the Garden.
Having soiled our own nest, we can’t abandon earth for another greener, brighter, happier planet. Of all the planetary options in this infinite universe, we were placed right here for good reason, and here we remain.

Our solace: all that ordinarily seems gray gleams golden
illuminated by the Light shining down on our shadowy selves.

Even when the news headlines are dismal,
when our individual struggles are great,
when human history seems to keep repeating itself,
our Creation is purposeful,
eternally preserved through divine sacrifice.

The solace of gray shadows melts to gold:
as part of the overall “benignant plan”
we have been given our life back.

Just a Drink of Cool Water…

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And on those hot afternoons in July,
when my father was out on the tractor
cultivating rows of corn, my mother
would send us out with a Mason jar
filled with ice and water, a dish towel
wrapped around it for insulation.

Like a rocket launched to an orbiting
planet, we would cut across the fields
in a trajectory calculated to intercept—
or, perhaps, even—surprise him
in his absorption with the row and the
turning always over earth beneath the blade.

He would look up and see us, throttle
down, stop, and step from the tractor
with the grace of a cowboy dismounting
his horse, and receive gratefully the jar
of water, ice cubes now melted into tiny
shards, drinking it down in a single gulp,
while we watched, mission accomplished.
~Joyce Sutphen “Carrying Water to the Field”

It was my special responsibility
to carry cold water out to my dad
when he was on the tractor doing field work. 

Yes, he could have carried a thermos along but then
he would not have seen his kid
walking carefully from the house over the fresh-turned dirt,
he would not have an excuse for a short break
to wipe the sweat from his face with his bright red kerchief,
nor sit and survey the straightness of his furrows.

He would not have lifted her up
to sit beside him on the tractor,
allowing her to “drive,”
steering down the rows,
curving around the killdeer nests
so their young are spared.

Indeed – it is a a special responsibility
to nurture someone at work
who doesn’t stop to refill themselves.
It happens rarely any more –
whether in the field or factory or home
or even – creating a daily blog like this.

What wondrous love to carry water to those who thirst.
What wondrous grace then fills our furrowed lives.

Thank you, faithful readers and supporters,
for you who carry water to me when I am dry and thirsty
convince me my work here is not in vain:
mission accomplished.

Once a year I ask my readers to fill out the feedback form at the bottom left of my blog home page, or this link to a feedback form

You can always directly email me at emilypgibson@gmail.com

Questions I hope you will answer to assist me in making Barnstorming worth your time:
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*what Barnstorming content would you rather see less often?
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*how can I make your time on Barnstorming more worthwhile?

Plowing Deep for Love

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image
image
Photo by Joel DeWaard

It’s the immemorial feelings
I like the best: hunger, thirst,
their satisfaction; work-weariness,
earned rest; the falling again
from loneliness to love;
the green growth the mind takes
from the pastures in March;
the gayety in the stride 
of a good team of Belgian mares
that seems to shudder from me
through all my ancestry.
~Wendell Berry “Goods”

photo by Joel De Waard
photo by Joel De Waard

The plow has savaged this sweet field
Misshapen clods of earth kicked up
Rocks and twisted roots exposed to view
Last year’s growth demolished by the blade.

I have plowed my life this way
Turned over a whole history
Looking for the roots of what went wrong
Until my face is ravaged, furrowed, scarred.

Enough. The job is done.
Whatever’s been uprooted, let it be
Seedbed for the growing that’s to come.
I plowed to unearth last year’s reasons—

The farmer plows to plant a greening season.
~Parker Palmer “Harrowing”

photo by Joel De Waard
photo by Joel De Waard

It’s not likely anyone would say I didn’t work hard enough.

After all, I come from a long line of human work-horses
who knew it takes sweat and tears, and sometimes bleeding.

Even so, all those years
I know I could have plowed more deeply than I did.

I could have thrown myself more fully
into the pull on the tugs,
shared the load more effectively,
shouldered the yoke with greater enthusiasm,
bent my neck down low with unbroken determination.

You could say somewhere
I lost the gayety in my stride,
and you would be right —
toward the end, I was trudging through the furrow,
bruised from turning up too many submerged rocks,
bumping into immoveable tree stumps,
tripping on hidden roots,
stuck in the deep mud
of long and lonely post-midnight hours.

You might even say the knowledge of a job well-done
lay at a depth my plow could ever reach.

I had seen others die in the harness,
never able to rest easy.

A few years ago I knew
the time had come
to shrug off the yoke,
shake off the bridle and bit,
shudder free of the harness.

On this side of the ground,
I find myself wondering and wandering,
the blinkers no longer impeding my vision,
feeling the morning sun on my unyoked withers.

Yet when I see an untilled field,
something in me even now
still tries to hold on to the plow —

photo by Joel De Waard
photo by Joel De Waard
photo by Joel De Waard

To Stop and Stare a Moment

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In truth I am puzzled most in life
by nine horses.

Two are on one side of the fence and seven
on the other side.

They stare at one another from the same places
hours and hours each day.

This is another unanswerable question
to haunt us with the ordinary.

We live far out in the country where I hear
creature voices night and day.

Like us they are talking about their lives
on this brief visit to earth.

In truth each day is a universe in which
we are tangled in the light of stars.

Stop a moment. Think about these horses
in their sweet-smelling silence.
~Jim Harrison from “Horses”

What is this life is, full of care
We have no time to stand and stare.
No time to stand beneath the boughs
And stare as long as sheep or cows.
No time to see, when woods we pass,
Where squirrels hide their nuts in grass.
No time to see, in broad daylight,
Streams full of stars, like skies at night.
No time to turn at Beauty’s glance,
And watch her feet, how they can dance.
No time to wait till her mouth can
Enrich that smile her eyes began.
A poor life this if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare.
~William Henry Davies “Leisure”

Fingers of twilight shadow
begin to reach over the hill
crawling down through the field
up unto the bank of blackberries
covering fences along the alder grove.

Our horses chew their last
clover leafs before coming to the barn for night,
eyelids heavy, relaxed and full, drowsy with summer evening
peace at hand and hoof.

A sudden change in the air forces
their heads up and ears forward;
they form a line, standing and staring at the hilltop
above them, riveted to the spot, alert
to an incoming intruder, unfamiliar and foreign.

The roar is intermittent, like a warm wind
rattling a barn roof, but inconstant;
then peaking over the crest of the hill
a rounded top of technicolor glory:

The hot air balloon rises.

The horses riveted, baffled, fascinated;
no wild instinct prepares their response
to this wizard’s act from Oz in their own backyard.

The basket riders wave and laugh at the equine audience below
standing in formation with golden noses in the air
and white manes blowing in the breeze.

The balloon summits the hill, dipping low, almost touchable
before moving back up to race the sunset,
and search out other pastures, other valleys and hills.

The horses released from the spell of “stand and stare”
leap in response, snowy tails high, noses flared-

To race up the hill to capture impending darkness,
our night-mares cavort, float suspended
until their air is let out, gently, in softening snorts,
to settle down in a straw bed in the barn
where night, becomes blissfully ordinary again.

So It Goes

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I spent seven hours yesterday at my daughter’s house
helping her expand their garden by at least ten times.
We dug up sod by the shovelful, shook off the dirt as
best we could; sod into the wheelbarrow and off to the
pile at the edge of the yard. Then all that over and over
again. Five hours total work-time, with time out for lunch
and supper. By the time I got home I knew all too well
that seventy-two is not thirty-five; I could barely move.

I got to quit earlier than Nadine. She told me I’d done
enough and that I should go get a beer and lie down on
the chaise lounge and cheer her on, which is what I did.

All this made me remember my father forty years ago
helping me with my garden. My father’s dead now, and
has been dead for many years, which is how I’ll be one
of these days too. And then Nadine will help her child,
who is not yet here, with her garden. Old Nadine, aching
and sore, will be in my empty shoes, cheering on her own.

So it goes. The wheel turns, generation after generation,
around and around. We ride for a little while, get off and
somebody else gets on. Over and over, again and again.
~David Budbill “Seventy-Two Is Not Thirty-Five” from Tumbling toward the End

The wheel turns, we cycle around again, get on and eventually get off.
This is a week of July birthdays in our family, for both old and young.

This hit me when we celebrated our grandson’s third birthday a few days ago in a suburban backyard where my daughter has continued the Gibson/Polis gardening tradition, using the compost we hauled in our truck from our farm several hours away.

Her peas were full and ripe and juicy, her greens lush and tasty – simple perfection thanks to her careful tending.

Meanwhile, our son gardens with his three boys in a very small urban backyard in Denver, teaching them what is weed and what will become a future meal.

I couldn’t help but get weepy, enjoying that special birthday feast.

…and knowing someday, our grandsons will plant and weed and harvest from the soil just as we and their parents did, over and over, again and again.

And this is why my eyes are closed
It’s just as well for all I’ve seen
And so it goes, and so it goes
And you’re the only one who knows
~Billy Joel

What the Sky Might Bring

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When it snows, he stands
at the back door or wanders
around the house to each
window in turn and
watches the weather
like a lover. O farm boy,
I waited years
for you to look at me
that way. Now we’re old
enough to stop waiting
for random looks or touches
or words, so I find myself
watching you watching
the weather, and we wait
together to discover
whatever the sky might bring.
~Patricia Traxler “Weather Man”

My father was a skywatcher,
cloud-noter, wind-gauger,

trained since birth
to check the weather first thing
and last. In those last

dim years when all else had left
mind and memory, he’d still stare
keenly out the car window

as I drove him to neurologist
or podiatrist, and exclaim with joy and

satisfaction: Look at those clouds!
And I knew right then
that watching the sky

was a good way to conduct a life–
that reading the outlines of clouds,

lifting a finger to the pulse of
breeze coming your way,

is what can hold you close,
clasp you tight to the thrum.
~Wendy Ingersoll “Weatherman”

My farm boy still looks at me that way,
wondering if today will bring
a storm,
or a scorcher,
or a deluge,
and I reassure him as best I can,
because he knows me so well
in our many years together:

today, like nearly every other day,
will be mostly cloudy
with occasional sun breaks.

Interruptible

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We must be ready to allow ourselves to be interrupted by God.
God will be constantly crossing our paths and canceling our plans…
― Dietrich Bonhoeffer from Life Together: The Classic Exploration of Christian Community

We may ignore, but we can nowhere evade, the presence of God.
The world is crowded with Him.
He walks everywhere incognito.
And the incognito is not always easy to penetrate.
The real labor is to remember to attend.
In fact to come awake.
Still more to remain awake.
~C.S. Lewis from “Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer”

I worked hard in my professional life to be interruptible:
my patients, colleagues and staff needed to be able to stop my momentum at any time to ask a question, get an opinion or redirect my attention to something more important. As a physician, it was crucial that I remained prioritized from outside my field of vision as I was not always aware at any given time where I’m needed most.

Yet in my personal life, I struggle with interruptions happening outside my control. I feel imposed upon when things don’t flow as I hoped or planned– after all,  this is MY life.

Yet…

God interrupts. 
God interferes. 
God intervenes. 
God intrudes. 
God intercedes.

As He must, because He is God. And I must be ready, accepting, answering His grace with grace.

It is HIS life living within me, His plan, His timing, His priorities.

Not mine.

Never mine.