It’s ripe, the melon by our sink. Yellow, bee-bitten, soft, it perfumes the house too sweetly. At five I wake, the air mournful in its quiet. My wife’s eyes swim calmly under their lids, her mouth and jaw relaxed, different. What is happening in the silence of this house? Curtains hang heavily from their rods. Ficus leaves tremble at my footsteps. Yet the colors outside are perfect– orange geranium, blue lobelia. I wander from room to room like a man in a museum: wife, children, books, flowers, melon. Such still air. Soon the mid-morning breeze will float in like tepid water, then hot. How do I start this day, I who am unsure of how my life has happened or how to proceed amid this warm and steady sweetness? ~Albert Garcia “August Morning” from Skunk Talk
I know I am getting old and I say so, but I don’t think of myself as an old man. I think of myself as a young man with unforeseen debilities. Time is neither young nor old, but simply new, always counting, the only apocalypse. And the clouds —no mere measure or geometry, no cubism, can account for clouds or, satisfactorily, for bodies. There is no science for this, or art either. Even the old body is new—who has known it before?—and no sooner new than gone, to be replaced by a body yet older and again new. The clouds are rarely absent from our sky over this humid valley, and there is a sycamore that I watch as, growing on the riverbank, it forecloses the horizon, like the years of an old man. And you, who are as old almost as I am, I love as I loved you young, except that, old, I am astonished at such a possibility, and am duly grateful. ~ Wendell Berry “VII.” from Leavings.
…today, the unseen was everything. The unknown, the only real fact of life. All this he saw, for one moment breathless and intense, vivid on the morning sky; and still, as he looked, he lived; and still, as he lived, he wondered. ~Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows
How do I start this day when I am unsure of the immense unknown?
I begin by looking. I live with wonder and astonishment; yet another morning has been gifted to me.
Even if sleep proved elusive, the air through the windows still warm at midnight. When even a melon-colored sky looks dry along with everything beneath it.
When wildfire smoke still drifts in on waves from the north and east, both obscuring and rounding the sharp edges of mountain peaks.
I wonder, grateful, for the sweetness on this tepid summer morning offering itself to me.
I’m here. I look, I live, I wonder. Let the day begin, opening up into the immense unknown.
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This world, after all our science and sciences, is still a miracle; wonderful, inscrutable, magical, and more, to whosoever will think of it.
To awaken each morning with a smile brightening my face; to greet the day with reverence for the opportunities it contains; to approach my work with a clean mind; to hold ever before me, even in the doing of little things, the ultimate purpose toward which I am working; to meet men and women with laughter on my lips and love in my heart; to be gentle, kind, and courteous through all the hours; to approach the night with weariness that ever woos sleep and the joy that comes from work well done – this is how I desire to waste wisely my days. ~Thomas Dekker, 16th century British playwright
I work hard at wasting my days wisely.
Summers are a classic opportunity to waste time and I do – happily – yet there is always a hint of regret: I could have made more of a dewy bright morning, an afternoon of cooling shadows, or a full-moon twilight.
Or perhaps I could have made this day better for someone else to waste.
How better to waste my days: to find ways for my interactions to be more joyous, if only through a smile, a shared chuckle, a kind word, a generous gesture.
Waste away, dear days. What a wonderful world this could be.
The world, after all, is a miracle and needs us to notice.
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Still, what I want in my life Is to be willing To be dazzled- To cast aside the weight of facts
And maybe even To float a little Above this difficult world. I want to believe I am looking
Into the white fire of a great mystery. I want to believe that the imperfectionsare nothing — that the light is everything — that it is more than the sum of each flawed blossom rising and fading. And I do. ~Mary Oliver from “The Ponds”from House of Light
Tell all the truth but tell it slant — Success in Circuit lies Too bright for our infirm Delight The Truth’s superb surprise As Lightning to the Children eased With explanation kind The Truth must dazzle gradually Or every man be blind — ~Emily Dickinson 1263
Who would have thought it possible that a tiny little flower could preoccupy a person so completely that there simply wasn’t room for any other thought? ~ Sophie Scholl from At the Heart of the White Rose
There are days we live as if death were nowhere in the background; from joy to joy to joy, from wing to wing, from blossom to blossom to impossible blossom, to sweet impossible blossom. ~Li-Young Lee from “From Blossoms”
I can’t always handle all the truth all at once, especially when it hurts.
It is best if truth coaxes me slowly out of the shadows where I like to hunker down, preoccupied, like a tight little bud refusing to open.
Truth told slant is an illuminating back drop, encouraging me to peek out from the darkness, open up, dazzled by the light.
And then, perhaps, ~just maybe~ I too may become almost dazzling to behold.
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How did I come to be this particular version of me, and not some other, this morning of purple delphiniums blooming like royalty, destined to meet these three dogs asleep at my feet, and not others— this soft summer morning, sitting on her screened porch become ours, our wind chime singing of wind and time, yellow-white digitalis feeding bees and filling me— and more abundance to come: basil, tomatoes, zucchini. What luck or fate, instinct, or grace brought me here— in shade, beneath hidden stars, a soft, summer morning, seeing with my whole being, love made visible. ~Laura Foley “The Once Invisible Garden” from Sledding in the Valley of the Shadow
Suddenly it is August again, so hot, breathless heat. I sit on the ground in the garden of Carmel, picking ripe cherry tomatoes and eating them. They are so ripe that the skin is split, so warm and sweet from the attentions of the sun, the juice bursts in my mouth, an ecstatic taste, and I feel that I am in the mouth of summer, sloshing in the saliva of August. Hummingbirds halo me there, in the great green silence, and my own bursting heart splits me with life. ~Anne Higgins “Cherry Tomatoes” from At the Year’s Elbow
Such still air. Soon the mid-morning breeze will float in like tepid water, then hot.
How do I start this day, I who am unsure of how my life has happened or how to proceed amid this warm and steady sweetness? ~Albert Garcia from “August Morning” from Skunk Talk
Write it in your heart that every day is the best day of the year. Live in the sunshine, swim in the sea, breathe the wild air. Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day. You shall begin it serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense. ~Ralph Waldo Emerson from Collected Poems and Translations
She has done what she could… ~Mark 14:8
How do I start this gift of a new August summer day?
When sleep is elusive, the air too still and warm at midnight When even a cloud-strewn sky looks dry When wildfire smoke drifts in on waves from north and east, obscuring, rounding out the sharp edges
Yet I taste the sweetness offered this tepid summer morning, unencumbered by my old over-thinking nonsense.
I’m here, present and accounted for, blessed by all I see. I am doing what I can. Let the day begin.
Even After All this time The sun never says to the earth,
“You owe Me.”
Look What happens With a love like that, It lights the Whole Sky. ~Daniel Ladinsky, from “The Gift”
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How easily happiness begins by dicing onions. A lump of sweet butter slithers and swirls across the floor of the sauté pan, especially if its errant path crosses a tiny slick of olive oil. Then a tumble of onions.
This could mean soup or risotto or chutney (from the Sanskrit chatni, to lick). Slowly the onions go limp and then nacreous and then what cookbooks call clear, though if they were eyes you could see
clearly the cataracts in them. It’s true it can make you weep to peel them, to unfurl and to tease from the taut ball first the brittle, caramel-colored and decrepit papery outside layer, the least
recent the reticent onion wrapped around its growing body, for there’s nothing to an onion but skin, and it’s true you can go on weeping as you go on in, through the moist middle skins, the sweetest
and thickest, and you can go on in to the core, to the bud-like, acrid, fibrous skins densely clustered there, stalky and in- complete, and these are the most pungent, like the nuggets of nightmare
and rage and murmury animal comfort that infant humans secrete. This is the best domestic perfume. You sit down to eat with a rumor of onions still on your twice-washed hands and lift to your mouth a hint
of a story about loam and usual endurance. It’s there when you clean up and rinse the wine glasses and make a joke, and you leave the minutest whiff of it on the light switch, later, when you climb the stairs. ~William Matthews “Onions”
I don’t mean to make you cry. I mean nothing, but this has not kept you From peeling away my body, layer by layer,
The tears clouding your eyes as the table fills With husks, cut flesh, all the debris of pursuit. Poor deluded human: you seek my heart.
Hunt all you want. Beneath each skin of mine Lies another skin: I am pure onion–pure union Of outside and in, surface and secret core.
…It’s true it can make you weep to peel them, to unfurl and to tease from the taut ball first the brittle, caramel-colored and decrepit papery outside layer, the least
recent the reticent onion wrapped around its growing body, for there’s nothing to an onion but skin, and it’s true you can go on weeping as you go on in, through the moist middle skins, the sweetest
and thickest, and you can go on in to the core, to the bud-like, acrid, fibrous skins densely clustered there, stalky and in- complete, and these are the most pungent… ~William Matthews from “Onions”
…I would never scold the onion for causing tears. It is right that tears fall for something small and forgotten. How at meal, we sit to eat, commenting on texture of meat or herbal aroma but never on the translucence of onion, now limp, now divided, or its traditionally honorable career: For the sake of others, disappear. ~Naomi Shihab Nye from “The Traveling Onion” from Words Under the Words: Selected Poems.
Onion, luminous flask, your beauty formed petal by petal, crystal scales expanded you and in the secrecy of the dark earth your belly grew round with dew. Under the earth the miracle happened and when your clumsy green stem appeared, and your leaves were born like swords in the garden, the earth heaped up her power showing your naked transparency…
…You make us cry without hurting us. I have praised everything that exists, but to me, onion, you are more beautiful than a bird of dazzling feathers, heavenly globe, platinum goblet, unmoving dance of the snowy anemone
and the fragrance of the earth lives in your crystalline nature. ~Pablo Neruda from “Ode to the Onion”
Everything smells of “eau de onion” here in the kitchen when the onions are brought in from our garden to be stored or dehydrated and frozen for winter soups and stews.
This is weepy business, but these are good tears like I spill over the whistled Greensleeves theme from the old “Lassie” TV show, or during any childrens’ choir song, or by simply watching videos of our grandchildren who live too far away to visit every day.
It takes almost nothing these days to make me weep, so onions are a handy excuse, allowing my tears to flow without explanation:
I weep over the headlines.
I weep over how messy things can get between people who don’t listen to one another or who misinterpret what they think they hear.
I weep knowing we all have layers and layers of skin that appear tough on the outside, but as you peel gently or even ruthlessly cut them away, the layers get more and more tender until you reach the throbbing heart of us.
We tend to hide our hearts out of fear of being hurt, crying out in pain.
Like an onion, each one of us exists to make the day a bit better, the meal more savory, to enhance the flavors of all who are mixed into this melting pot together, trying to make sad things new.
We aren’t meant to stand alone, but to disappear into the stew, and be sorely missed if we are absent.
So very dish needs an onion, and for the sake of the dish, every onion vanishes in the process.
No, I don’t mean to make you cry as you peel my layers away, gently, one by one, each more tender until you reach my heart. Chop away at me if you must but weep the good tears, the ones that mean we weep for the sake of our meal together: you eating and drinking, and me – consumed.
Lyrics: When the dark wood fell before me And all the paths were overgrown When the priests of pride say there is no other way I tilled the sorrows of stone
I did not believe because I could not see Though you came to me in the night When the dawn seemed forever lost You showed me your love in the light of the stars
Chorus: Cast your eyes on the ocean Cast your soul to the sea When the dark night seems endless Please remember me
Then the mountain rose before me By the deep well of desire From the fountain of forgiveness Beyond the ice and fire
Though we share this humble path, alone How fragile is the heart Oh, give these clay feet wings to fly To touch the face of the stars
Breathe life into this feeble heart Lift this mortal veil of fear Take these crumbled hopes, etched with tears We’ll rise above these earthly cares
Lyrics: Light after darkness, gain after loss Strength after weakness, crown after cross; Sweet after bitter, hope after fears Home after wandering, praise after tears
Alpha and Omega Beginning and the end He is making all things new Springs of living water Shall wash away each tear He is making all things new Sight after mystery, sun after rain Joy after sorrow, peace after pain; Near after distant, gleam after gloom Love aftеr wandering, life after tomb
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The first week of August hangs at the very top of summer, the top of the live-long year, like the highest seat of a Ferris wheel when it pauses in its turning.
The weeks that come before are only a climb from balmy spring, and those that follow a drop to the chill of autumn, but the first week of August is motionless, and hot.
It is curiously silent, too, with blank white dawns and glaring noons, and sunsets smeared with too much color. ~Natalie Babbitt from Tuck Everlasting
After an early summer of moderate temperatures and occasional rains, we’re adjusting to temperatures in the nineties. No one asked me if enduring heat, humidity, and smoky skies was a reasonable way to conclude the first week of August.
So I sit silently rocking and sweating in the highest vantage point of this summer’s ferris wheel ride so far, hanging breathlessly mid-air, a brief pause in the endless cycle of sunny days.
Having just arrived at the top, I venture to look down, knowing I am simply along for the ride, and Someone else is at the controls. I might as well enjoy the view of all that is behind, alongside and in front of me, but especially what is below, holding me up in thin air.
All too quickly will come the rapid descent into autumn, my stomach leaping into my chest with the lurch forward into the unknown. As the climb to get here took so long, I am not quite ready for this inevitable drop back into the chill.
Hot or not, it’s best to celebrate August for all it’s splashiness and shining illumination necessitating sunglasses. At least I’m swinging in what little breeze there is, endeavoring to capture this moment, and every moment, forever.
Lyrics from poem by James Agee: Sure on this shining night Of starmade shadows round Kindness must watch for me This side the ground On this shining night This shining night
Sure on this shining night Of starmade shadows round Kindness must watch for me This side the ground On this shining night This shining night
The late year lies down the north All is healed, all is health High summer holds the earth Hearts all whole
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 Sure on this shining night
Sure on this shining night I weep for wonder Wandering far alone Of shadows on the stars
Sure on this shining night Of starmade shadows round Kindness must watch for me This side the ground
Oh, this shining night This shining night The shining night Sure on this shining night
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of the gladiola open all down the long aisle of the stem
like a choral procession or the woody notes
of a flute opening one stop at a time. ~Linda Pastan “Gladiola”
Most flowers tempt our senses: vibrant colors to the eye, softness of the petals to the touch, delicate fragrances wafting to the nose – even some have a piquant perfumed taste for the palate.
Yet how many blooms sound like an orchestra tuning in the wind?
A long gladiola stalk rises boldly, swaying in the breeze, each key blossom unfolding one by one in flowing overture, a kaleidoscope symphone planted in a row.
When each is done with its own ruffled note, the next one opens to play its part, in harmony with its neighbor.
The notes progress up the stem until the final chord is held ~fermata-like~ until performances commence again next summer.
I’ll be sure to reserve a front row seat.
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Light splashed this morning on the shell-pink anemones swaying on their tall stems; down blue-spiked veronica light flowed in rivulets over the humps of the honeybees; this morning I saw light kiss the silk of the roses in their second flowering, my late bloomers flushed with their brandy. A curious gladness shook me. So I have shut the doors of my house, so I have trudged downstairs to my cell, so I am sitting in semi-dark hunched over my desk with nothing for a view to tempt me but a bloated compost heap, steamy old stinkpile, under my window; and I pick my notebook up and I start to read aloud and still-wet words I scribbled on the blotted page: “Light splashed…”
It is too easy to be ground to a pulp by the various irritations of the day – aggravations are too easily expressed, worries never seem to wane – all of it sucks gladness out of me.
When my feelings become four-dimensional and surround and drown me, I lose all perspective on what got me out of bed to begin the day.
God is in these intricate details, whether the splash of light on a petal or the smell of rotting compost; it is my job to notice this. It is tempting to look past His ubiquitous presence in all things, to seek out only the elegant grandeur of creation and bypass the plain and smelly and homely.
Yet even what lacks beauty from my limited perspective is worthy of His divine attention. He knows the value and purpose of each thing He created, including me and the things that aggravate me no end – like mosquitos.
The time has come to be refreshed and renewed even when surrounded by decay. His care is revealed in the tiniest way. He is worthy of my attention because I am constantly worthy of His.
If I rise early enough, I can see each new day’s light splash everything awake. By the time I come in to sit down to record my words and photos, I’m thoroughly washed by a fresh dawn. I can scarcely wait to take on what this day will bring.
I can scarcely wait till tomorrow when a new life begins for me, as it does each day, as it does each day.
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There will come soft rains and the smell of the ground, And swallows circling with their shimmering sound;
And frogs in the pools singing at night, And wild plum trees in tremulous white,
Robins will wear their feathery fire Whistling their whims on a low fence-wire;
And not one will know of the war, not one Will care at last when it is done.
Not one would mind, neither bird nor tree If mankind perished utterly;
And Spring herself, when she woke at dawn, Would scarcely know that we were gone. ~Sara Teasdale “There Will Come Soft Rains”
…one of man’s purposes is to assist God in the work of “hallowing” the things of Creation. By a tremendous heave of the spirit, the devout man frees the divine sparks trapped in the mute things of time; he uplifts the forms and moments of creation, bearing them aloft into the rare air and hallowing fire in which all clays must shatter and burst. ~Annie Dillard from Pilgrim at Tinker Creek
The fire burst the house and let it slam flat down, puffing out skirts of spark and smoke.
The crash. The attic smashing into kitchen and parlour. The parlour into cellar, cellar into sub-cellar. Smoke and silence. A great quantity of smoke. Dawn showed faintly in the east. Among the ruins, one wall stood alone. Within the wall, a last voice said, over and over again and again, even as the sun rose to shine upon the heaped rubble and steam: “Today is August 5, 2026, today is August 5, 2026, today is…”
Light wakes us – there’s the sun climbing the mountains’ rim, spilling across the valley, finding our faces. It is July, between the hay and harvest, a time at arm’s length from all other time, the roads ragged with meadowsweet and mallow, with splays of seedheads, slubbed and coarse, rough linen. The fields above the house, clotted with sheep all spring, are empty now and froth with flowering grasses, still in the morning light. Birds move around the leafy fields, the leafy garden.
It is the time to set aside all vigil, good or ill, to loosen the fixed gaze of our attention as dandelions let seedlings to the wind. Wake with the light. Get up and go about the day and watch its surfaces that brighten with the sun.
And later, when the light is drowsed and heavy go find the burdened fruit trees where the shade lies splashed and opened-out across the ground. Spread over it a quilt worn soft by other bodies, then curl and fall down into sleep at light.
Awaken to a world of long, loose grass-stems, and leaves above, and birds, breaking out of the leaves. ~Kerry Hardie from “Sleep in Summer”
Saying good-bye to July last week meant admitting summer is already half-baked and so are we–
we who are still doughy, not nearly done enough.
The rush to autumn is breathless. We want to hold on tight to our longish days, fall asleep in the grasses, endure sweaty nights for just a little while longer…
Please, oh please grant us unending light and steady us for the task of getting ready for letting go.
A new series of summer photo notecards from our farm is now available as a thank you gift to you for your financial support of Barnstorming — details here
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