Category: sunset

The Sunrise Shall Visit Us: Like a Root Not Ready

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In the dark I rest,
unready for the light which dawns
day after day,
eager to be shared…
I need
more of the night before I open
eyes and heart
to illumination. I must still
grow in the dark like a root
not ready, not ready at all.
~Denise Levertov from “Eye Mask”

photo by Joel DeWaard

The people walking in darkness
    have seen a great light;
on those living in the land of deep darkness
    a light has dawned.
~Isaiah 9:2

photo by Joel DeWaard

Take heart…
There is a power here in the bowels of the earth,
a “deeper magic,” as C.S. Lewis called it. 
Death is not given the final word.
Christ doesn’t need to turn east to greet the sunrise:
he is himself the Dawn by whose light we see light (Psalm 36:9). 
The sun will not set again. 
That was our last night.
Ever.
~Sarah Arthur from Introduction to Between Midnight and Dawn

Over this past week of gray rainy days that begin and end in an all-encompassing and, in some ways, comforting darkness, I am feeling quite “hunkered down.” 

I’m seeking shelter right now, surrounded like a root yet to sprout, needing time to ready myself for the power of the Light soon to come.

In the fullness of time, I’ll be called forth to merge with the Dawn.

Advent 2023 theme
…because of the tender mercy of our God,
whereby the sunrise shall visit us from on high 
to give light to those who sit in darkness
and in the shadow of death,
to guide our feet into the way of peace.
Luke 1: 78-79 from Zechariah’s Song

Come, my Way, my Truth, my Life:
Such a Way, as gives us breath:
Such a Truth, as ends all strife:
Such a Life, as killeth death.

Come, My Light, my Feast, my Strength:
Such a Light, as shows a feast:
Such a Feast, as mends in length:
Such a Strength, as makes his guest.

Come, my Joy, my Love, my Heart:
Such a Joy, as none can move:
Such a Love, as none can part:
Such a Heart, as joys in love.
~George Herbert “The Call”

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God is in the Details

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Thanksgiving starts with thanks for mere survival,
Just to have made it through another year
With everyone still breathing. But we share
So much beyond the outer roads we travel;
Our interweavings on a deeper level,
The modes of life embodied souls can share,
The unguessed blessings of our being here,
The warp and weft that no one can unravel.

So I give thanks for our deep coinherence
Inwoven in the web of God’s own grace,
Pulling us through the grave and gate of death.
I thank him for the truth behind appearance,
I thank him for his light in every face,
I thank him for you all, with every breath.
~Malcolm Guite “Thanksgiving: A Sonnet”

Poetry is what you find
in the dirt in the corner,

overhear on the bus,
God in the details,

the only way to get from here to there.
Poetry (and now my voice is rising)

is not all love, love, love,
and I’m sorry the dog died.

Poetry (here I hear myself loudest)
is the human voice,

and are we not of interest to each other?
~Elizabeth Alexander from “Ars Poetica #100: I Believe”

photo of old Dylan by Nate Gibson

I started writing over twenty years ago as a way to explain who I am for descendants I will never know. I am beyond grateful for those of you who have shown an interest in what I share, whether photography, poetry or prose.

What you find here is my voice of thankfulness for the way God somehow finds His way into the details of my days – especially into the dustiest corners.

I try to preserve what challenges, shapes and molds me:
the beauty I witness in sunrises and sunsets,
this farm that blooms and often bears unexpected fruit,
the animals, those who live here and those passing through,
my mistakes and missteps, buoyed by a loving God,
my family and good folks surrounding me.

I want to say thank you on this Thanksgiving Day to each one of you who take a few minutes from your day to follow my stories. Some of you have become precious friends despite our never having met.

I am honored to hear from you whenever you have a moment.
Your details matter to me, and especially to God.

So when will I hear you tell your story?

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From Everywhere and Nowhere At Once

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There is a gold light in certain old paintings
That represents a diffusion of sunlight.
It is like happiness, when we are happy.
It comes from everywhere and from nowhere at once, this light…
One day the sickness shall pass from the earth for good.
The orchard will bloom;
Our work will be seen as strong and clean and good
And all that we suffered through having existed
Shall be forgotten as though it had never existed.
~Donald Justice – excerpt from Collected Poems

I live where golden hour light is doled out sparingly
– we just might get too used to it –
where gray clouds tend to mute and muffle the spirit.

So I search for light as if it is buried like treasure.

When gilded light illuminates and glows,
when all is immersed and lifted by its radiance,
I forget the gray, as if it never was.

So I wait patiently, ready for another such burst of joy
coming from everywhere and nowhere all at once.
A moment in time to be preserved, not to be forgotten.

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An Unvanquished November Sun

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Than these November skies
Is no sky lovelier. The clouds are deep;
Into their grey the subtle spies
Of colour creep,
Changing that high austerity to delight,
Till ev’n the leaden interfolds are bright.
And, where the cloud breaks, faint far azure peers
Ere a thin flushing cloud again
Shuts up that loveliness, or shares.
The huge great clouds move slowly, gently, as
Reluctant the quick sun should shine in vain,
Holding in bright caprice their rain.
And when of colours none,
Not rose, nor amber, nor the scarce late green,
Is truly seen, —
In all the myriad grey,
In silver height and dusky deep, remain
The loveliest,
Faint purple flushes of the unvanquished sun.
~John Freeman “November Skies”

November is a barren landscape growing peasant-bare and farmer-plain with austerity. Even so, the month is often offset by a royal light show in the skies. I am able to witness golden and purple hues in the light show of the rising and setting sun.

The sky has subtlety and nuance, not unlike what we see in a beloved aging face. Indeed, a remembered beauty is visible behind myriad gray. The horizon’s folds, lines and wrinkles are glowing with lambent light and depth.

Despite these darkening days, our sun is never vanquished. May I be illuminated like these incredible skies, my grayness enrobed within royal golds and purples.

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A Ripening Dusk

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Once in your life you pass
Through a place so pure
It becomes tainted even
By your regard, a space
Of trees and air where
Dusk comes as perfect ripeness.
Here the only sounds are
Sighs of rain and snow,
Small rustlings of plants
As they unwrap in twilight.
This is where you will go
At last when coldness comes.
It is something you realize
When you first see it,
But instantly forget.
At the end of your life
You remember and dwell in
Its faultless light forever.
~Paul Zimmer “The Place” from Crossing to Sunlight Revisited.

I like the slants of light; I’m a collector.
That’s a good one, I say…
~Annie Dillard from Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

I won’t forget the glow on the hill as the sun drops,
centering behind our sentinel tree.
I won’t forget the rays coming through the branches,
or an evening primrose unwrapping.
I won’t forget the way the air itself changes as the color spreads,
like a fragrant scent carried on the wind.
I won’t forget how the mountain overwhelms,
how the road seems to go on forever,
how I feel hugged by tree-lined pathways.

The light is faultless but I am not.
My collection of slants of light may fade with time
and twilight flower buds may be reluctant to unwrap in moonlight.
Even so, it was – maybe just once – so perfect, so pure, so ripe.
And I’ll remember I was there to witness it.

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No Longer Young and Still Half-Perfect

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Ah Sun-flower! weary of time,
Who countest the steps of the Sun:
Seeking after that sweet golden clime
Where the travellers journey is done.
~William Blake from “Ah Sun-flower”

My work is loving the world.
Here the sunflowers, there the hummingbird—
equal seekers of sweetness.
Here the quickening yeast; there the blue plums.
Here the clam deep in the speckled sand.

Are my boots old? Is my coat torn?
Am I no longer young, and still half-perfect? Let me
keep my mind on what matters,
which is my work,

which is mostly standing still and learning to be astonished.
The phoebe, the delphinium.
The sheep in the pasture, and the pasture.
Which is mostly rejoicing, since all the ingredients are here,

which is gratitude, to be given a mind and a heart
and these body-clothes,
a mouth with which to give shouts of joy
to the moth and the wren, to the sleepy dug-up clam,
telling them all, over and over, how it is
that we live forever
~Mary Oliver “Messenger” from Thirst

My boots are old and leaky and my coat is torn. I’m no longer young but I still go out into the world every day to find something to smile about.

A time-weary sunflower hangs its head to stare down at its roots, no longer able to lift its face to greet the sun as it rises or bid it farewell as it sinks into the horizon. Still very much alive, it focuses instead on where it came from, putting its energy into the seeds, to make sure there is a next generation, and a next and a next.

That is more than half-perfect.
That is its work in this world and that is my work these days.

Weary at times but rejoicing.
Withered and torn and weather-beaten
but still capable of joy and wonder that
we are so deeply loved as we are.

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Out of a Misty Dream

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They are not long,
The weeping and the laughter,
Love and desire and hate:
I think they have no portion in us after
We pass the gate.

They are not long,
The days of wine and roses:
Out of a misty dream
Our path emerges for a while, then closes
Within a dream.
~Ernest Dowson “They are not long…”
“Vitae summa brevis spem nos vetat incohare longam”
(Our brief sum of life forbids us to embark upon a protracted hope)

photo by Joel DeWaard


When I consider the bittersweet brevity of life,
I don’t think how much I will miss wine and roses.
Eventually, when I pass through the gate,
it will be other loves that determine my path
into the misty night:

My husband’s kind eyes and gentle hands
Hugs and snuggles with grandkids
Worship and prayer and potlucks with church family
Just-baked bread and dark chocolate
The smell and sound of long-awaited rain
Ponies and puppies
Scent of sweetpeas and taste of green peas in the pod
Tunes of bouncy bluegrass and familiar folk songs
Birdsong in the morning and frog chorus at night
Wistful sunsets, and more so, welcoming sunrises

and ever so much more…

We are called forth from here to a hope beyond imagining.
This is only a taste.

photo by Josh Scholten
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Great Trees Fall Away

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When great trees fall,
rocks on distant hills shudder,
lions hunker down
in tall grasses,
and even elephants
lumber after safety.

When great trees fall
in forests,
small things recoil into silence,
their senses
eroded beyond fear.

When great souls die,
the air around us becomes
light, rare, sterile.
We breathe, briefly.
Our eyes, briefly,
see with
a hurtful clarity.
Our memory, suddenly sharpened,
examines,
gnaws on kind words
unsaid,
promised walks
never taken.

Great souls die and
our reality, bound to
them, takes leave of us.
Our souls,
dependent upon their
nurture,
now shrink, wizened.
Our minds, formed
and informed by their
radiance, fall away.
We are not so much maddened
as reduced to the unutterable ignorance of
dark, cold
caves.

And when great souls die,
after a period peace blooms,
slowly and always
irregularly. Spaces fill
with a kind of
soothing electric vibration.
Our senses, restored, never
to be the same, whisper to us.
They existed. They existed.
We can be. Be and be
better. For they existed.
~ Maya Angelou “When Great Trees Fall”

It sounded like July 4 fireworks
lighting up the evening

a pop, then silence-
a crack, then several more.

I look out the kitchen window – the old Spitzenburg tree
had fallen, irrevocably split and splintered.

Neither wind, nor lightning-felled,
simply toppled by old age and inner rot

It lies still, its hollowed trunk
like a brittle bone broken

Given up and given in
after decades of battering winter wind storms

Instead it fell in a fragile fruiting finale,
pulled up by the roots

coming for to carry me home
at twilight’s last gleaming.

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True Stars at Daybreak

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photo by Nate Gibson

On the tidal mud, just before sunset,
dozens of starfishes
were creeping. It was
as though the mud were a sky
and enormous, imperfect stars
moved across it as slowly
as the actual stars cross heaven.
All at once they stopped,
and, as if they had simply
increased their receptivity
to gravity, they sank down
into the mud, faded down
into it and lay still, and by the time
pink of sunset broke across them
they were as invisible
as the true stars at daybreak.
~Galway Kinnell “Daybreak”

photo by Nate Gibson

We know the stars,
heavenly or terrestrial,
still shine,
though made invisible by a brighter light –
hidden in plain sight at daybreak
yet always throwing sparks,
ever eternally lit,
immersed but never overwhelmed
within the muddy dark.

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I Dare Not Look Away

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I dare not look away
From beauty such as this,
Lest, while my glance should stray,
Some loveliness I miss.

The trees might choose to print
Their shadow on the lake;
The windless air might glint
With aspen leaves that shake.

Over the mountains there
A thin blue veil might drift;
Then in a moment rare
This thin blue veil might lift.

Ah, I must pay good heed
To beauty such as this,
Lest, in some hour of need,
Its loveliness I miss.
~Jesse Belle Rittenhouse “In the Green Mountains”

Steeped in my own worries and thoughts as I go about my housework and barn chores, I could be missing something lovely happening outside while I’m not looking. Perhaps the gray fog is clearing to reveal a cloudless blue sky, or the sun angles just right for everything to appear gilded, or magical rays of light and rainbows appear behind my back.

If I glance out at such a moment of irreplaceable beauty, I grab it and hang on as long as I can. It spreads balm over my soul and provides a gift to my spirit. It’s a wonder I get anything else done.

It is as if the loveliness was meant just for me, but I know better. Beauty is best when shared.

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