Category: Summer

Each Thing Noticed

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The Old Testament book of Micah answers the question
of why we are here with another:
“What doth the Lord require of thee but to do justly,
and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?”
We are here to abet creation and to witness it,
to notice each thing so each thing gets noticed.
Together we notice not only each mountain shadow
and each stone on the beach
but we notice each other’s beautiful face
and complex nature so that creation need not play
to an empty house.
~Annie Dillard from Life Magazine’s “The Meaning of Life”

I started out a noticer,
a child who crawled on the ground
to follow winding ant trails from their hills,
then watched nests bloom with birds,
sitting still as a lizard sunning himself on a rock.

Next I was a student researcher of great apes,
following wild chimpanzees deep into an exotic forest
to observe their life in a community so much like our own.

Then came a profession and parenting and daughtering,
with mounting responsibilities and worries and cares,
and I stopped noticing any more,
too much inside the drama
to witness it from outside.

Creation played to an empty house
and the empty house was me.

Slowly now,
I’ve returned to noticing again~
buying my ticket, finding my seat,
smiling and nodding
applauding
hooting and hollering
begging for an encore.

It’s a non-stop show of the miraculous
where I’m an appreciative audience
preparing to write a great review.

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A Solace of Ripe Plums

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I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox

and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast

Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold
~William Carlos Williams “This is Just to Say”

(and the actual response from Dr. Williams’ wife Florence published later with his poem posthumously)

Dear Bill: I’ve made a couple of sandwiches for you. In the ice-box you’ll find blue-berries–a cup of grapefruit a glass of cold coffee.

On the stove is the tea-pot with enough tea leaves for you to make tea if you prefer–Just light the gas– boil the water and put it in the tea

Plenty of bread in the bread-box and butter and eggs– I didn’t know just what to make for you. Several people called up about office hours– See you later.

Love. Floss.

Please switch off the telephone.

munching a plum on   
the street a paper bag
of them in her hand
They taste good to her
They taste good   
to her. They taste
good to her

You can see it by
the way she gives herself
to the one half
sucked out in her hand
Comforted
a solace of ripe plums
seeming to fill the air
They taste good to her
~William Carlos Williams “To a Poor Old Woman”

Such richness flowing
through the branches of summer and into

the body, carried inward on the five
rivers! Disorder and astonishment

rattle your thoughts and your heart
cries for rest but don’t

succumb, there’s nothing
so sensible as sensual inundation. Joy

is a taste before
it’s anything else, and the body

can lounge for hours devouring
the important moments. Listen,

the only way
to tempt happiness into your mind is by taking it

into the body first, like small
wild plums.
~Mary Oliver “The Plum Trees” from American Primitive

Who needs an icebox anyway
when the plums
are hanging heavy
in the orchard

dotted with chilled dew
glistening
in the spare pink light
of dawn

so ripe
and so ready
their golden flesh
warming in the sun.
~Emily Gibson “A response to Dr. Williams”

There is a plum tree on our farm that is so plain and unassuming much of the year that I nearly forget that it is there.  It is a bit off by itself away from the other fruit trees; I have to make a point of paying attention to it otherwise it just blends into the background.

Despite not being noticed or having any special care, this tree thrives.  In the spring it is one of the first to bud out into a cloud of white blossoms with a faint sweet scent.  Every summer it is a coin toss whether it will decide to bear fruit or not. Some years–not at all, not a single plum. Other years, like this one, it is positively glowing with plum harvest– each a golden oval with a pink blush. These plums are extraordinarily honey flavored and juicy, a pleasure to eat right off the tree if you don’t mind getting past a bitter skin and an even more bitter pit inside. This is a beauty with a bite — sweet surrounded by bitter.

I think the tree secretly grins when it sees puckering taking place all around it.

This tree is a lot like some people I know: most of the time barely noticeable, hanging on the periphery,  fairly reserved and unobtrusive.  But when roots go deep and the nourishment is substantial, they bear a bounty of fruit, no doing things half-way. The feast is plentiful and abundant, the meal glorious despite the hint of sour. Maybe it is even more glorious because of sweet within bitter.

If “tucker” describes a great down-home meal, then being “plum-tuckered” would be eating our fill of the bitter-sweet. Even when the bitter in this life is plentiful, the sweet will always overwhelm and overcome.

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The Secrets of September

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The golden-rod is yellow;
The corn is turning brown;
The trees in apple orchards
With fruit are bending down.

The gentian’s bluest fringes
Are curling in the sun;
In dusty pods the milkweed
Its hidden silk has spun.

The sedges flaunt their harvest,
In every meadow nook;
And asters by the brook-side
Make asters in the brook.

From dewy lanes at morning
The grapes’ sweet odors rise;
At noon the roads all flutter
With yellow butterflies.

By all these lovely tokens
September days are here,
With summer’s best of weather,
And autumn’s best of cheer.

But none of all this beauty
Which floods the earth and air
Is unto me the secret
Which makes September fair.

‘Tis a thing which I remember;
To name it thrills me yet:
One day of one September
I never can forget.
~Helen Hunt Jackson “September“

I can choose to fight the inevitable march of time with sighs and sorrows, thus arm myself with sour bitterness for what is no more,

or I can flow unmoved for as long as I can stay afloat,
only passively aware of the passage of all around me,

or I can smile in secret at awakening each morning,
whether to sun or wind or rain,
grateful I’ve been given one more day to get it right,

or at least to care enough to try.

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August Ends with a Quick Kiss

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The foliage has been losing its freshness through the month of August, and here and there a yellow leaf shows itself like the first gray hair amidst the locks of a beauty who has seen one season too many.
~Oliver Wendell Holmes from Songs of Many Seasons 1862-1874

Let me enjoy this late-summer day of my heart while the leaves are still green and I won’t look so close as to see that first tint of pale yellow slowly creep in. I will cease endless running and then look to the sky ask the sun to embrace me and then hope she won’t tell of tomorrows less long than today. Let me spend just this time in the slow-cooling glow of warm afternoon light and I’d think I will still have the strength for just one more last fling of my heart.
– John Bohrn ” Late August “

August rushes by like desert rainfall,
A flood of frenzied upheaval,
Expected,
But still catching me unprepared.
Like a match flame
Bursting on the scene,
Heat and haze of crimson sunsets.
Like a dream
Of moon and dark barely recalled,
A moment,
Shadows caught in a blink.
Like a quick kiss;
One wishes for more
But it suddenly turns to leave,
Dragging summer away.
– Elizabeth Maua Taylor “August”

Everything is made to perish;
the wonder of anything at all is that it has not already done so.
No, he thought.
The wonder of anything is that it was made in the first place.
What persists beyond this cataclysm of making and unmaking?
~Paul Harding from Tinkers

Earthly contentment
~perhaps a house stayed dry in a flood
or a forest was passed over in a wildfire
or a devastating diagnosis was averted
or a bank account contained sufficient funds
or gray hairs remain successfully hidden~
won’t last.

Like a quick kiss, it is done and gone, and cannot last.

May I not settle for comfort and contentment
but seek to fill
my overwhelming needs
with what will not perish,
even as the leaves turn yellow
and the light begins to fade,
and rest assured
as the seasons pass, altering the landscape,
I too must be changed.

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A Purple Blemish

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Her body is not so white as
anemone petals nor so smooth—nor
so remote a thing. It is a field
of the wild carrot taking
the field by force; the grass
does not raise above it.
Here is no question of whiteness,
white as can be, with a purple mole
at the center of each flower.

Each flower is a hand’s span
of her whiteness.  Wherever
his hand has lain there is
a tiny purple blemish.  Each part
is a blossom under his touch
to which the fibres of her being
stem one by one, each to its end,
until the whole field is a
white desire, empty, a single stem,
a cluster, flower by flower,
a pious wish to whiteness gone over —
or nothing.
~William Carlos Williams — “Queen Anne’s Lace” (1919)

We all arise from a single stem, branching off in countless directions, a thousand million hues and shapes and types.

We reflect the sun’s light and the Light of the Son.

There can be no question of whiteness nor a pious wish for purity – we are all purple-blemished right at the heart.

We bleed together, my friends, as He did for us.

We bleed together.

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Sliding to Safety

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I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel. ~Maya Angelou

Years ago, our small church, Wiser Lake Chapel,  once belonged to a summer co-ed softball league, along with 8 other churches and a few local businesses. This was a traditional Thursday evening summer activity for a generation or longer. Couples met for the first time on the ball fields and eventually married. Babies attended games in back packs and strollers and eventually were catching at home plate.  Relatives going to different churches found themselves on opposing teams yelling good-natured insults. During our years of participation in the league, there were a few bopped heads, abrasions, sprained fingers and one broken leg as part of the deal. Hot dog roasts and ice cream sundaes were the after-game rewards.

Nothing was quite as wonderful as how a team recreated itself year after year. It was thrown together by our coach Brenda in a mere two weeks prior to the season starting, with the youngest members needing to be at least age 14 with no upper age limit; we’ve had our share of 70+ year olds on the team over the years. Some ball players were raw beginners having never played catch or swung a bat outside of school PE class. A few others had extensive history of varsity fastpitch in school or other community league play so meant business when they strolled out on the diamond. During a few years, we were a force to be reckoned with when we had over a dozen local university students join our church who were incredible players and power hitters.

It was the ultimate diverse talent pool.

A different dynamic exists in church league softball compared to Little League, Pony League, minors or majors when you watch or play. Sure, there still are slow pitch teams that stock their ranks with “invitation-only” players, reserving the best and most athletic so there is a real chance at the trophy at the end of the summer. Churches like ours, a mere 150 people average weekly Sunday attendance, had a “come one, come all” attitude, just to make sure we avoided forfeiting by not having enough players week after week. We always did have enough.  In fact we had more players than we could find positions for. And we had a whole bleacher full of fans, dedicated to cheering and clapping for anything and everything our players did, whether it was a pop-up foul ball, a strike out swing, a missed catch, or an actual hit. We loved it all and wanted our players to know they were loved too, no matter what they did or what happened.

I think that was why the players and fans came back to play week after week, though we hadn’t won a game in years. We rooted and hollered for each other, got great teaching and encouragement from our fantastic coach, and the players’ skills did improve year to year despite months of inactivity. We had a whole line up of pre-14 year olds eager to grow old enough to play, just so they could be a part of the action.

Why did it not matter that we didn’t win games? We were winning hearts, not runs. We were showing our youngsters that the spirit of play is what it is all about, not about the trophy at the end. We were teaching encouragement in the face of errors, smiles despite failure, joy in the fellowship of people who love each other–spending an evening together week after week.

We are family; family picks you up and dusts you off when you’ve fallen flat on your face during your slide to base while still being called “out.”

Most of all, I see this as a small piece of God’s kingdom in action.  Although we no longer gather for church league baseball — the competition got too fierce (and hazardous to our health), the rules too tight — we still gather for a pick-up game now and then, just to remind ourselves of who we are and what we are about.

Our coach models Jesus’ acceptance of all at the table, and embodies the fruits of the spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, gentleness, faithfulness, and self control.

Our players are the eager, the ambivalent, the accurate, the flawed, the strong, the weak, the fast, the slow: chosen for the game even if they were completely inadequate to the task at hand, volunteering to be part of each moment as painful as it can sometimes be.

The cheering from the bleachers comes as if from heaven itself:
Do not be afraid. Good will to all. We are well pleased. Amen!

We’re sliding to home plate, running as hard as we can, diving for safety, covered in the dust and mire and blood of living/dying and will never, ever be called “out”.

Let’s play ball.

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Golden Pentimenti of Hopes

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The goldfinches have left.
They have gathered up the air
                    beneath their black-robed wings
and shaken off the dust of our dusty world.

Abandoned thistle, crown of thorns;
broken bone stalk;
               and morning air, cloak
of our salvation, rent in absence.

What’s left?
Pentimenti of hopes
               in a dissolving frame.
Only, try to remember the endless knot of their song.
~Franchot Ballinger, “Passion Painting with no Goldfinches” from Crossings

Goldfinches, the Washington state bird, visit our feeders regularly until the air starts to chill in another month or so. Before I began offering up thistle seeds for the taking, they were only a golden streak across the barnyard during spring and summer, barely seen but clearly on a mission I could not discern. Now they linger companionably where I can witness their sparkling conversations while they share a meal with one another, as if our feeders were a local cafe.

Soon they will be gone, leaving pentimento shadows of where they once had been, their bright yellow feathers colored over with the dusty brown paint of a dry tired summer.

In over 500 Renaissance masterpieces of Jesus and Mary, the European goldfinch is included, representing the redeeming passion of Christ. In contrast to the plain black baseball cap of our American goldfinch, the legend is that its European cousin’s splash of red on its face represents Christ’s blood from the finch plucking a thorn of thistle from Jesus’ brow as He carried the cross to Calgary.

I always miss their flash of gold once they move to warmer wintering places. Yet like the restoration of Old Masters paintings, I know there will come a discovery of a painted-over portrait or scene that once again shines with renewed brilliance — the goldfinches will return with their riches of feather and song, bringing with them the promise of hope and redemption.

European Goldfinch from the Salt Project website
The Goldfinch by Carel Fabritius 1654
Madonna of the Goldfinch (1505–1506) by Raphael
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A Gift of Purple

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Walking, I drew my hand over the lumpy
bloom of a spray of purple; I stripped away
my fingers, stained purple; put it to my nose,

the minty honey, a perfume so aggressively
pleasant—I gave it to you to smell,
my daughter, and you pulled away as if

I was giving you a palm full of wasps,
deceptions: “Smell the way the air
changes because of purple and green.”

This is the promise I make to you:
I will never give you a fist full of wasps,
just the surprise of purple and the scent of rain.
~Kwame Dawes “Purple”

But maybe I ought to practise a little now?
So people who know me are not too shocked and surprised
When suddenly I am old, and start to wear purple.
~Jenny Joseph from “Warning”

I own no purple clothing or accessories to wear – never have.
It’s not that I don’t like purple – I do. I just have never felt worthy to be adorned in it like the sky and flowers and fruit.

Perhaps my reluctance to wear purple is that it represents the rich and royal … yet also the bruised and battered … all at once. I know One who was both and took a beating for me, in my place.

A surprise in His gift of purple to us all.

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Out of Imagination

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Sometimes the mind

is taken by surprise
as it speaks, are you
sure this is the right street?
for example—or just

cowpath—no more: a blurb,
a bleep, really, out of
the imagination, and then
once again everything is

perfectly still, save, perhaps,
a cow or two on the horizon,—

and the sound of cowbirds
in sudden excellence, where

formerly there were none.
~Jane Mead “Sometimes the Mind” From The Usable Field

photo by Bette Vander Haak
photo by Bette Vander Haak
photo by Bette Vander Haak

Many current roads started out as cowpaths decades ago. These meandering trails made sense to cows at the time. Subsequently, because people lack imagination, we tend to also follow those original twist and turns as we navigate life’s byways. Now paved with asphalt and good intentions, our roads accommodate more than a herd of cows giving hitchhiking cowbirds a free meal.

Cowbirds don’t lack imagination though; they are ready-made opportunists. They occupy any furry back that happens to attract tasty insects. The (horse?)birds happily set sail on a dinner cruise while doing their host a favor by gobbling irritating flies.

Imagine meandering through countryside pastures all day, unconcerned where the next meal will come from because it always comes to you.

Its easy if you try. You can say I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one. I hope someday you’ll join us and the world (horses, cows, birds) will live as one…

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Awaiting a Time Less Bold

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My mother, who hates thunder storms,
Holds up each summer day and shakes
It out suspiciously, lest swarms
Of grape-dark clouds are lurking there;
But when the August weather breaks
And rains begin, and brittle frost
Sharpens the bird-abandoned air,
Her worried summer look is lost,

And I her son, though summer-born
And summer-loving, none the less
Am easier when the leaves are gone
Too often summer days appear
Emblems of perfect happiness
I can’t confront: I must await
A time less bold, less rich, less clear:
An autumn more appropriate.
~Philip Larkin “Mother, Summer, I” from Collected Poems.

I am summer-born. Like almost anyone else who lives and breathes, I’m also summer-loving. But this … this has simply been too much cheerful weather all at once. Stretches of weeks with no gray skies can start to become an uneasy expectation, as if we’re somehow owed sunny days.

I too hold up each summer day and shake it suspiciously, wondering if dark clouds or angry yellow jackets and wasps may be hiding inside. I scan the skies for the potential promise of precipitation, sniffing the air for a hint of moisture. When an occasional leaf lets go and drifts to the ground, I celebrate it as a preview of the upcoming autumn shattering of trees.

When the pressures of summer become too much for people like me, we enter warm weather mental hibernation, too overwhelmed by the multitude of options and opportunities and fresh produce and,
let’s face it, … pleasure and perfect happiness.

I can’t wait for the weather to break. I can’t wait for autumn, followed by a dreary winter, when I can once again start wistfully longing …
for summer.

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