Category: Spring

A Speechless Receptacle

barnstormingblog1 Comment

It doesn’t have to be
the blue iris,
it could be weeds
in a vacant lot,
or a few
small stones;
just pay attention, then patch


a few words together
and don’t try to make them elaborate.
This isn’t
a contest but the doorway


into thanks, and a silence
in which another voice may speak.
~Mary Oliver “Praying” from Thirst

Now that I’m free to be myself, who am I?
Can’t fly, can’t run, and see how slowly I walk.
Well, I think, I can read books.

Well, I can write down words, like these, softly.

It doesn’t happen all of a sudden, you know.

“Doesn’t it?” says the wind, and breaks open, releasing
distillation of blue iris.

And my heart panics not to be, as I long to be,
the empty, waiting, pure, speechless receptacle.
~Mary Oliver from The Blue Iris

To plunge headlong into
the heart of a blossom, its amber eyes
inscrutably focusing on your own,
magnified by a lens of dew.
Whose scent, invisible,
drowns you in opulence, and for which
you can find nothing adequate to say.

You sense that you are loved wholly,
yet are quite unable to understand why.
But then, you lift your face,
creased with the ordinary, to a heaven
that is breaking into blue,
and find your contentment utterly beyond
telling, unspeakable, uncontained.
~Luci Shaw from “Speechless” from  Sea Glass

Now that I’m free to be myself,
I’m also free to tell about how
creased with the ordinary,
I notice things I passed by before.

Fleeting moments become more precious,
as I long to be –
while time pours through my fingers.

It doesn’t have to be the blue iris,
it doesn’t have to be glistening raindrops,
but today it is both…

I fall headlong into their depths,
through a doorway
into thanks,
lost in their earthbound ethereal beauty,
to a heaven that is breaking into blue.

Oh, and so grateful to Mary and Luci,
I am no longer a speechless receptacle without words…

rainyiris4
irissunset

Only a Visitor

barnstormingblog2 Comments

The moment when, after many years
of hard work and a long voyage
you stand in the centre of your room,
house, half-acre, square mile, island, country,
knowing at last how you got there,
and say, I own this,

is the same moment when the trees unloose
their soft arms from around you,
the birds take back their language,
the cliffs fissure and collapse,
the air moves back from you like a wave
and you can’t breathe.

No, they whisper. You own nothing.
You were a visitor, time after time
climbing the hill, planting the flag, proclaiming.
We never belonged to you.
You never found us.
It was always the other way round.
~Margaret Atwood “The Moment”from Eating Fire

The farm where we live has fields on a hill with woods. Evening walks are listening walks, with birdsong now identifiable thanks to our Merlin app on our phones.

There is always plenty to hear.

It is an immense relief to listen to something other than talking heads on TV or podcasts. The voices we hear in the woods remain unconcerned about politics, hantavirus outbreaks or the state of the economy.

I also listen to the sound of breezes rustling the tree branches, the crunch of sticks and dry leaves under my boots, and more often than not, woodpeckers tapping away at tree trunks, eagles chittering from the treetops, and unseen owls visiting back and forth from their hidey-holes.

So, like the outside world, our farm does have its own talking heads and drama, but I know who I will listen to and where I prefer to hang out if given a choice.

I know I’m only a visitor to their world –
there is no owning this land, only temporary stewardship.
We will be invited back as long as we tread softly.

Until next time then, until next time.

Not One Will Know

barnstormingblogLeave a comment
photo by Josh Scholten

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 “War Time  There will come soft rains”

photo by Josh Scholten

Not much to me is yonder lane  
 Where I go every day;  
But when there’s been a shower of rain  
 And hedge-birds whistle gay,  
I know my lad that’s out in France
 With fearsome things to see  
Would give his eyes for just one glance  
 At our white hawthorn tree.

.    .    .    .  

Not much to me is yonder lane  
 Where he so longs to tread:
But when there’s been a shower of rain  
I think I’ll never weep again  
 Until I’ve heard he’s dead.
~Siegfried Sassoon “The Hawthorn Tree”

…war spreading,
families dying,
the world in danger,
I walk the rocky hillside,
sowing clover…
~by Wendell Berry, “February 2, 1968”, from The Peace of Wild Things

The headlines talk about ceasefires on several fronts –
Ukraine/Russia, Israel/Gaza, Iran/U.S.
yet they seem unconvincing.

Still, with talks of peace, drone bombs fly and reap destruction,
their fire and smoke overpowering any negotiations to stop killings.

Modern war attacks remotely
but death is never remote.
It is real and devastating and final.

So the soft rains come,
like long-held-back tears,
trying to heal scarred land
and despairing hearts.

We keep planting for the future,
sowing hope in weary bloody ground.

Something the World Should Know

barnstormingblog1 Comment

There we shall rest and we shall see;
we shall see and we shall love;
we shall love and we shall praise.
Behold what shall be in the end and shall not end.
~St. Augustine: ‘The City of God,’ Bk. XXII, Chap. 30.

The cows know. Standing still
in the pasture, chewing cud
and steadily swishing flies.
With those enormous eyes,
they look for all the world
as if they know.

The wind knows.
It whispers to the grass.
The grass tells the trees
who pass it on to the birds.
The crickets discover it
all on their own.

But you and I, we don’t.
Though on a day like today
when the sun is bright
and the cattails let loose
a flurry of tiny parachutes,
we sense there’s something
the world knows.

The dogs would tell us
if only we would listen.
~Kendall Dunkelberg”They Know” from Tree Fall with Birdsong

A man crosses the street in rain,
stepping gently, looking two times north and south,
because his son is asleep on his shoulder.

No car must splash him.
No car drive too near to his shadow.

This man carries the world’s most sensitive cargo
but he’s not marked.
Nowhere does his jacket say FRAGILE,
HANDLE WITH CARE.

His ear fills up with breathing.
He hears the hum of a boy’s dream
deep inside him.

We’re not going to be able
to live in this world
if we’re not willing to do what he’s doing
with one another.

The road will only be wide.
The rain will never stop falling.
~Naomi Shihab Nye “Shoulder” from Red Suitcase

And just what is it that we should know?
What are we missing that the cows, the wind, the trees, the grass, the birds, the crickets, the cattails, and certainly dogs know that we struggle to understand?

Simply this:
be content,
live aware of each moment as it comes,
be grateful for it and say so,
then have hope for the next moment, no matter how hard it may be.

Cherish whatever and whoever depends on us,
love them with all we’ve got.
Provide the shoulder that someone else needs.
Give ourselves away without expecting something in return.
Write it down so it is not lost.

We can see it deep in our dogs’ eyes. They know.

photo by Nate Gibson

Ordinary as Unmown Grass

barnstormingblogLeave a comment

I will seek a letter at the mailbox’s red flag, how many more times?
Walk this puddled gravel drive with the dog and cat, how many more times?

Dislike the sight, row of brown molehills risen like my own petty complaints?
Be here to hear the just-before-spring birds tune up, how many more times?

My life, ordinary as unmown grass, tattered and dormant in fencerows….
Sons asleep upstairs under quilts pieced of castoff jeans, how many more times?

Witness sunrise over the barn, frost on the grass, deer by the pines? Think of “Jesus asking that man, Do you want to be made well? How many more times?

Think of Him asking me. Of walking back to the mailbox in late afternoon,
of pulling it open, reaching in again, how many more times?
~Daye Phillippo “Ordinary Ghazal” from Thunderhead

…it’s easy to forget that the ordinary is just the extraordinary that’s happened over and over again. Sometimes the beauty of your life is apparent. Sometimes you have to go looking for it. And just because you have to look for it doesn’t mean it’s not there.
God, grant me the grace of a normal day.
~Billy Coffey

I tend to get complacent in my daily routines, confident in the knowledge that tomorrow will be very much like yesterday.

I look out on plenty of unmown grass.

The reality is there is nothing ordinary about the events of this day or any other – it might have been otherwise and some day it will be otherwise.

I am reminded to stop rushing, take a look around and actually revel in the quiet moments of daily work, chats, walks, meals, and sleep, and yes, lawn mowing. As both of us suffered, one after the other, through a spring cold which interrupted our plans and schedules, we still knew how remarkable it is to just be here living life together.

We are granted peace even, maybe especially, when not feeling well.

Christ came to earth to remind us to dwell richly in the experience of these moments, to live, wanting to be well, despite our limitations.

God knows, such is a foretaste of the heaven which is to come.

Weather Happens to All of Us

barnstormingblog2 Comments

There is weather on the day you are born
and weather on the day you die. There is
the year of drought, and the year of floods,
when everything rises and swells,
the year when winter will not stop falling,
and the year when summer lightning
burns the prairie, makes it disappear.
There are the weathervanes, dizzy
on top of farmhouses, hurricanes
curled like cats on a map of sky:
there are cows under the trees outlined
in flies. There is the weather that blows
a stranger into town and the weather
that changes suddenly: an argument,
a sickness, a baby born
too soon. Crops fail and a field becomes
a study in hunger; storm clouds
billow over the sea;
tornadoes appear like the drunk
trunks of elephants. People talking about
weather are people who don’t know what to say
and yet the weather is what happens to all of us:
the blizzard that makes our neighborhoods
strange, the flood that carries away
our plans. We are getting ready for the weather,
or cleaning up after the weather, or enduring
the weather. We are drenched in rain
or sweat: we are looking for an umbrella,
a second mitten; we are gathering
wood to build a fire.
~Faith Shearin “Weather” from Orpheus, Turning.

On the planet the winds are blowing: the polar easterlies, the westerlies, the northeast and southeast trades…
Lick a finger, feel the now.
~Annie Dillard from Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

I’m still discovering, right up to this moment, that it is only by living completely in this world that one learns to have faith. I mean living unreservedly in life’s duties, problems, successes and failures, experiences and perplexities. In so doing, we throw ourselves completely into the arms of God.
~Dietrich Bonhoeffer from The Cost of Discipleship

Never before in the history of humanity have we had the ability to pull the weather forecast out of our pocket and know not only what to anticipate in the next 24 hours or 10 days, but even what is happening right now.

Prior to phone apps, we scanned the skies, checked the barometer, looked at where the weather vane points, monitored the thermometer, and put a licked finger up to test the wind direction.

As obsolete as those measures seem now, I confess they still make sense to me.

It’s a little silly if my phone says it is raining at “my location” and I can’t find a single cloud.

I want to know what is happening around me from my own observation,
trust my own eyes,
feel my own sweat in the heat,
my chilly goose bumps in the cold,
my wet head in the rain,
my hair messy in the wind.

I want to know we’re all in this together, right now.

I want to live completely in this world, living now, finger held to the wind.

Then, having the information I need, I throw myself completely into the arms of God.

Ready to Listen

barnstormingblog4 Comments

Every morning I sit across from you
at the same small table,
the sun all over the breakfast things—
curve of a blue-and-white pitcher,
a dish of berries—
me in a sweatshirt or robe,
you invisible.

Most days, we are suspended
over a deep pool of silence.
I stare straight through you
or look out the window at the garden,
the powerful sky,
a cloud passing behind a tree.

There is no need to pass the toast,
the pot of jam,
or pour you a cup of tea,
and I can hide behind the paper,
rotate in its drum of calamitous news.

But some days I may notice
a little door swinging open
in the morning air,
and maybe the tea leaves
of some dream will be stuck
to the china slope of the hour—
then I will lean forward,
elbows on the table,
with something to tell you,
and you look up, as always,
your spoon dripping milk, ready to listen.
~Billy Collins “A Portrait of the Reader With a Bowl of Cereal” from Picnic, Lightning

The smell of that buttered toast simply spoke to Toad,
and with no uncertain voice;
talked of warm kitchens,
of breakfasts on bright frosty mornings,
of cozy parlour firesides on winter evenings,
when one’s ramble was over
and slippered feet were propped on the fender;
of the purring of contented cats,
and the twitter of sleepy canaries.
~Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows

Some of what we do, we do
to make things happen,
the alarm to wake us up, the coffee to perc,
the car to start.

The rest of what we do, we do
trying to keep something from doing something
the skin from aging, the hoe from rusting,
the truth from getting out.

With yes and no like the poles of a battery
powering our passage through the days,
we move, as we call it, forward,
wanting to be wanted,
wanting not to lose the rain forest,
wanting the water to boil,
wanting not to have cancer,
wanting to be home by dark,
wanting not to run out of gas,

as each of us wants the other
watching at the end,
as both want not to leave the other alone,
as wanting to love beyond this meat and bone,
we gaze across breakfast and pretend.
~Miller Williams “Love Poem with Toast” from Some Jazz a While: Collected Poems

“Do you remember the Shire, Mr. Frodo? It’ll be spring soon. And the orchards will be in blossom. And the birds will be nesting in the hazel thicket. And they’ll be sowing the summer barley in the lower fields… and eating the first of the strawberries with cream. Do you remember the taste of strawberries?”
―  J.R.R. Tolkien from Lord of the Rings

In our despairing moments,
we hold on to memories most precious to us,
recalling what makes each moment,
indeed life itself, special and worthwhile.

It can be something so seemingly simple
becoming cherished and retrievable–
the aroma of cinnamon in a warm kitchen,
the splash of colors in a carefully tended garden spot,
the cooing of mourning doves as light begins to dawn,
the velvety soft of a newborn foal’s fur,
the embrace of welcoming arms.

This morning, dear reader,
I lean forward,
elbows on the table,
with something to tell you,
and you look up, as always,
in the middle of whatever you are doing,
ready to listen.

That is no small thing. Thank you.

When the Pasture Gate is Opened

barnstormingblogLeave a comment

No speed of wind or water rushing by
But you have speed far greater. You can climb
Back up a stream of radiance to the sky,
And back through history up the stream of time.
And you were given this swiftness, not for haste
Nor chiefly that you may go where you will,
But in the rush of everything to waste,
That you may have the power of standing still-
Off any still or moving thing you say.
Two such as you with such a master speed
Cannot be parted nor be swept away
From one another once you are agreed
That life is only life forevermore
Together wing to wing and oar to oar
~Robert Frost “Master Speed”

I’m going out to clean the pasture spring;
I’ll only stop to rake the leaves away
(And wait to watch the water clear, I may):
I sha’n’t be gone long.—You come too.

I’m going out to fetch the little calf
That’s standing by the mother. It’s so young,
It totters when she licks it with her tongue.
I sha’n’t be gone long.—You come too.
~Robert Frost “The Pasture”

An Epithalamion

Today, the day the pasture gate opens
after a long winter, you are let out on grass
to a world vast and green and lush
beyond your wildest imaginings.

You run leaping and bounding,
hair flying in the wind, heels kicked up
in the freedom to form together
this binding trust of covenant love.

You share your rich feast today,
as grace grows like grass
stretching to eternity, yet bound safely
within the fence rows of sacred vows.

When rains come, as hard times always do,
and this spring day feels far removed,
when buffeted by the winds or mud or frost or drought of life,
know your promises were made to withstand any storm.

Even though leaning and breaking, as fences tend to do,
they remind you to whom you belong and where home is,
anchoring you if you lose your way,
pointing you back to the gate opened to you today.

Once there you will remember the gift of commitment:
a community of faith and our God has blessed
this beckoning gate, these fences, and most of all your love
as you feast with joy on the richness of His spring pasture.

…That, I Could Do

barnstormingblog2 Comments

“Be a lotus in the pond,” she said, “opening
slowly, no single energy tugging
against another but peacefully,
all together.”

I couldn’t even touch my toes.
“Feel your quadriceps stretching?” she asked.
Well, something was certainly stretching.

Standing impressively upright, she
raised one leg and placed it against
the other, then lifted her arms and
shook her hands like leaves. “Be a tree,” she said.

I lay on the floor, exhausted.
But to be a lotus in the pond
opening slowly, and very slowly rising–
that I could do.
Mary Oliver “First Yoga Lesson” from Blue Horses

After dinner, I try to digest
kale and cauliflower in my longing
to live longer, and a root-beer float
in case my world ends tomorrow.

I play the gamble game with exercise
and diet, reminded daily by obituaries
featuring people younger than me:
the impossible becoming likely.

I want to go out full, embraced by my life,
the grand quilt of being here. Yet memories
are remnants, and come one patch at a time.
And like moments, most fade unnoticed.

After a storm, I take a walk.
At the jasmine vine by my front door,
a raindrop, suspended on a stem, stops me.
What I want, what I can have, merge.
~Jeanie Greensfelder “What I Want and What I Can Have”  from I Got What I Came For

In spring there’s hope,
in fall the exquisite, necessary diminishing,
in winter I am as sleepy
as any beast in its leafy cave,
but in summer there is
everywhere the luminous sprawl of gifts,
the hospitality of the Lord
and my inadequate answers as
I row my beautiful, temporary body
through this water-lily world.
~Mary Oliver from “Six Recognitions of the Lord”

It is hard to accept my temporary status on this earth,
until face to face with the compounding limitations of aging.

Perhaps a life-time guarantee of flexibility would be lovely,
depending on the length of the lifetime.
But forget balancing like a contorted tree waving in the breeze.
Even in my prime, I never could manage it without tipping over.

And so I float, slowly opening, like a bouyant lily pad.
That I can do…

Even if I am slower to rise than I used to be, I am blessed
by the immense gift of the Lord’s hospitality, as long as I’m here.

Anointed by Blossoms

barnstormingblog1 Comment

Resurrection of the little apple tree outside
my window, leaf-
light of late
in the April
called her eyes, forget
forget—
but how
How does one go
about dying?
Who on earth
is going to teach me—
The world
is filled with people
who have never died
~Franz Wright “On Earth” from Walking to Martha’s Vineyard

The year Dylan’s mother died
I picked sprays of apple blossom,
wound its pink, off-white shades
in raffia for you to take to him.

Every year it’s out I think of us,
the children, how apples bring
the tree so low, until they thud
to the lawn, drumming the end 

of summer. The blossom was heavy 
when Dylan’s mother was dying – 
old wood doing its best again –
and he, like you, was so young.
~Jackie Wills “Apple Blossom”

Is there anything in Spring so fair
As apple blossoms falling through the air?

When from a hill there comes a sudden breeze
That blows freshly through all the orchard trees.

The petals drop in clouds of pink and white,
Noiseless like snow and shining in the light.

Making beautiful an old stone wall,
Scattering a rich fragrance as they fall.

There is nothing I know of to compare
With apple blossoms falling through the air.
~Henry Adams Parker “Apple Blossoms”

Jesus,
Apple of God’s eye,
dangling solitaire
on leafless tree,
bursting red.

As he drops
New Eden dawns
and once again
we Adams choose:
God’s first fruit
or death.
~Christine F. Nordquist “Eden Inversed”

But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep. For as by a man came death, by a man has come also the resurrection of the dead. 

For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive. But each in his own order: Christ the firstfruits, then at his coming those who belong to Christ. 
1 Corinthians 15:20-23

The rain eased enough
to allow blades of grass to stand back up
refreshed, yet unsuspecting,
primed for the mower’s next cutting swath.

Clusters of pink tinged blossoms
sway in response to my mower’s pass.
Apple buds bulge on snagging branches,
showering me from their hidden raindrop reservoirs
collected within each blushing petal cup.

My face anointed by perfumed apple tears
when I tend to forget – forget–
this first fruit is offered, not forbidden,
hanging from the tree, broken
so our hearts will drop too, bursting open red
with Him.