Through sere trees and beheaded grasses the slow rain falls. Hay fills the barn; only the rake and one empty wagon are left in the field. In the ditches goldenrod bends to the ground. Even at noon the house is dark. In my room under the eaves I hear the steady benevolence of water washing dust raised by the haying from porch and car and garden chair. We are shorn and purified, as if tonsured. The grass resolves to grow again, receiving the rain to that end, but my disordered soul thirsts after something it cannot name. ~Jane Kenyon “August Rain, After Haying” from Collected Poems
August arrives in the dark
we are not even asleep and it is here with a gust of rain rustling before it…
but in the stillness after the rain ends nothing is to be heard but the drops falling one at a time from the tips of the leaves into the night and I lie in the dark listening to what I remember while the night flies on with us into itself ~W.S. Merwin from “Nocturne II” from The Shadow of Sirius
A long-awaited August rain arrives in the night and like the ground and plants, I look skyward letting the clouds weep on me, cleansing me of dust.
Will I restore like the brown and dying blade of grass, turning green and lush in a matter of days?
Is there enough benevolence from the sky to cleanse and settle my grime, yielding yet more harvest?
I thirst for what I cannot name. The mystery is, when I’m drenched, thirst and dust settled, I’m aching for more.
AI image created for this post
One-Time
Monthly
Yearly
Make a one-time or recurring donation to support daily Barnstorming posts
Our shadows bring them from the shadows: a yolk-yellow one with a navy pattern like a Japanese woodblock print of fish scales. A fat 18-karat one splashed with gaudy purple and a patch of gray. One with a gold head, a body skim-milk-white, trailing ventral fins like half-folded fans of lace. A poppy-red, faintly disheveled one, and one, compact, all indigo in faint green water. They wear comical whiskers and gather beneath us as we lean on the cement railing in indecisive late-December light, and because we do not feed them, they pass, then they loop and circle back. Loop and circle. Loop. “Look,” you say, “beneath them.” Beneath them, like a subplot or a motive, is a school of uniformly dark ones, smaller, unadorned, perhaps another species, living in the shadow of the gold, purple, yellow, indigo, and white, seeking the mired roots and dusky grasses, unliveried, the quieter beneath the quiet. ~Susan Kolodny “Koi Pond, Oakland Museum”
The boardwalk, a treachery of feathers ready to receive another broken bone, looms just above the surface. Step deliberately when approaching. With few exceptions, ice has claimed this part of the pond.
This is where you see her, moving through what free water remains: a sluggish ghost in the shadows, slow, conserving the fragile heat she still has in this late winter. A canopy of juniper dressed with light snow overhangs, watching.
Last year, a quorum of her kind was lost, turned to stone, to frigid silence. She doesn’t know that story, but some instinct guides her to keep what warmth she can, to cruise in stubborn torpor.
In her drift, she remembers the summer, her long, languid vowels, the accompanying texts of her companions. How they interwove manuscripts, narrations of sky, tree, sun, and moon. Warm days are a memory now, and thoughts rest lightly in her body.
She has held the same posture for an hour. Her bones have reached a conclusion— an idea about hope itself— there, near the indifferent bridge, inches from the force that will take her ~Carolyn Adams, “Koi Pond” from Going Out to Gather
The water going dark only makes the orange seem brighter, as you race, and kiss, and spar for food, pretending not to notice me. For this gift of your indifference, I am grateful. I will sit until the pond goes black, the last orange spark extinguished. ~Robert Peake from “Koi Pond”
Koi and goldfish thrived in our pond after we covered it with netting, finally thwarting the herons arriving at dawn for breakfast.
Thus protected, our fish grew huge, celebrating each feeding with a flurry of tail flips and gaping mouths as I tossed pellets to them each evening.
When the pond cooled in the fall and sometimes ice-covered in winter, the fish settled at the bottom, barely moving silhouettes of color in the darkness. Spring would warm them to action again. As the water temperature rose, so did they, eager and hungry to flash their color and fins again.
Two winters ago, the chill winds and low temperatures lasted longer than usual. As the pond ice began to melt, the fish at the bottom remained still as stones. Netting them for burial felt like burying the sun and the moon and the stars, relegating their rainbows of light and color deep into the earth.
No longer would their colorful glory shine, an illumination now extinguished.
I haven’t had the heart to try again. I need a pond heater, a new filter system, and a total clean out of the pond if I am going to restock.
But then I remember the joy of feeding those flashes of fins and fish mouths, so I just might try again.
Rainbows promise to return, even from buried stone.
AI image created for this post
Lyrics From the love of my own comfort From the fear of having nothing From a life of worldly passions Deliver me O God From the need to be understood From the need to be accepted From the fear of being lonely Deliver me O God And I shall not want I shall not want When I taste Your goodness I shall not want From the fear of serving others From the fear of death or trial From the fear of humility Deliver me O God
One-Time
Monthly
Yearly
Make a one-time or recurring donation to support daily Barnstorming posts
There was an entire aspect to my life that I had been blind to — the small, good things that came in abundance. ~Mary Karr from The Art of Memoir
We can only be said to be alive in those moments when our hearts are conscious of our treasures. ~Thornton Wilder, quotes from “Our Town”
The smell of baking bread, smooth floured hands, butter waiting to be spread with blackberry jam, and I realize, this is no small thing. These days spent confined, I am drawn to life’s ordinary details, the largeness of all we can do alongside what we cannot. The list of allowances far outweighs my complaints. I am fortunate to have flour and yeast, a source of heat, not to mention soft butter, the tartness of blackberries harvested on a cold back road. A kitchen, a home, two working hands to stir and knead, a clear enough head to gather it all. Even the big toothy knife feels miraculous as it grabs hold and cracks the crust. ~Ellen Rowland “No Small Thing”
The words from “Our Town” written over 80 years ago still ring true: our country a Great Depression of the economy then – now we stagger under a Great Depression of the spirit.
Despite being more connected electronically, we are actually more divisive than ever, many feeling estranged from family, friends, faith.
Some less economically secure, yet many emotionally bankrupt.
May we be more conscious of our abundance – our small daily treasures.
God knows we need Him. He cares for us, even when we turn our faces away from Him.
I search the soil of this life, this farm, this faith to find what still yearns to grow, to bloom, to fruit, to be harvested to share with others.
My deep gratitude goes to you who visit here once in awhile, or daily. Thank you to those who let me know the small and the good I share with you makes a difference.
I’m right here, alongside you in joint Thanksgiving to our Creator and Preserver.
Many blessings today and always, Emily
Let it go my love my truest Let it sail on silver wings Life’s a twinkling and that’s for certain But it’s such a fine thing
CHORUS:There’s a gathering of spirits There’s a festival of friends And we’ll take up where we left off When we all meet again
I can’t explain it I couldn’t if I tried How the only things we carry Are the things we hold inside
Like a day in the open Like the love we won’t forget Like the laughter that we started And it hasn’t died down yet
Oh let it go my love my truest Let it sail on silver wings Life’s a twinkling and that’s for certain But it’s such a fine thing
Oh yeah now didn’t we And don’t we make it shine Aren’t we standing in the center of Something rare and fine
Some glow like embers Like a light through colored glass Some give it all in one great flame
Throwing kisses as they pass
So let it go my love my truest Let it sail on silver wings Life’s a twinkling and that’s for certain But it’s such a fine thing
East of eden But there’s heaven in our midst And we’re never really all that far From those we love and miss Wade out in the water There’s a glory all around And the wisest say there’s a thousand ways To kneel and kiss the ground
Oh let it go my love my truest Let it sail on silver wings Life’s a twinkling and that’s for certain But it’s such a fine thing
One-Time
Monthly
Yearly
Make a one-time or recurring donation to support daily Barnstorming posts
Just down the road… around the bend, Stands an old empty barn; nearing the end. It has sheltered no animals for many years; No dairy cows, no horses, no sheep, no steers. The neigh of a horse; the low of a cow; Those sounds have been absent for some time now. There was a time when the loft was full of hay, And the resounding echoes of children at play. At one time the paint was a bold shade of red; Gradually faded by weather and the sun overhead. The doors swing in the wind… the hinges are loose, Windows and siding have taken a lot of abuse. The fork, rope and pulleys lifted hay to the mow, A task that always brought sweat to the brow. But those good days are gone; forever it seems, And that old barn now stands with sagging beams. It is now home to pigeons, rats and mice; The interior is tattered and doesn’t look very nice. Old, abandoned barns have become a trend, Just down the road… around the bend. ~Vance Oliphant “Old Barn”
photo by Nate Gibson
photo by Nate Gibson
There is something very lonely about a barn completely empty of its hay stores. Our old red hay barn had stood empty for several years; because of roof leaks and gaps in the walls, we and our neighbors who had used it for years to house a winter hay supply found other places to put our hay. The winter winds wore away its majesty: missing shingles tore away larger holes in the roof, the mighty beams providing foundational support started sinking and rotting in the ground, a gap opened in the sagging roof crest, and most devastating of all, two walls collapsed in a particularly harsh blow.
The old barn was in death throes after over one hundred years of history.
Its hollow interior echoed with a century of farmers’ voices: soothing an upset cow during a difficult milking, uncovering a litter of kittens high in a hay loft, shouting orders to a steady workhorse, singing a soft hymn while cleaning stalls, startling out loud as a barn owl or bat flies low overhead. Dust motes lazily drift by in the twilight, seemingly forever suspended above the straw covered wood floor, floating protected from the cooling evening breezes
There was no heart beat left in this dying barn. It was in full arrest, all life blood drained out, vital signs flat lined. I could hardly bear to go inside much less take pictures of its deteriorating shell.
We had people show up at our front door offering to demolish it for the lumber, now all the fad for expensive modern “vintage” look in new house construction. A photo of our barn showed up in local media declaring “another grand old barn in the county has met its end.” That stung. Meanwhile we were saving our money, waiting until we could afford to bring our old red barn back to life.
It started with one strong young man digging out the support posts to locate the rot. Then another remarkable young man was able to jack up the posts one by one, putting in reinforcing steel and concrete and straightening the gaping sagging roof line, providing the old barn with its first ever foundation.
And then a crew of two men replaced the damaged roof and absent walls with metal siding. The barn became whole again.
There was a lot of clean up left to do inside: decades of old hay build up and damaged lumber and untold numbers of abandoned mouse nests and scattered barn owl pellets.
The barn had been shocked back to a pulse like in its “heyday” – the throb of voices, music blaring, dust and pollen flying chaotically, the rattle of the electric “elevator” hauling bales from wagon to loft, the grunts and groans of the crew as they heft and heave the bales into place in the stack. It will go on late into the night, the barn ablaze with lights, the barnyard buzzing with excitement and activity.
It once again has served as the back up sanctuary on Easter morning when we were rained out up on the hill for Sunrise Service.
Now vital signs are measurable, rhythm restored, volume depletion reversed, prognosis good for another 100 years.
Another old barn has been resuscitated back to life when so many are left to die. It is revived and breathing on its own again. Its floor will creak with the weight of the hay bales and walls will groan with the pressure of stacks.
I must remember there is always hope for the shattered and weary and frail among us. If an old barn can be saved, then so can we.
So can we.
AI image created for this post
One-Time
Monthly
Yearly
Make a one-time and recurring donation to support daily Barnstorming posts
Rain. An excuse to stand at the window And listen, watch, wait. Listen: to the hush Of the house as still as a dark burrow Where an animal hides. Listen: the rush Of occasional gusts, then the stillness.
Watch: the wrens hopping from stem to wet stem Their happy bearing in contrast to titmice Who always seem afraid. Watch: the mayhem That strikes when the grumpy bluejay, twice As big as the rest, frumps onto a branch.
Wait: for what? For the steady rain to cease. Wait: for the fair sunlight to avalanche Down from space and remake the world again. Then let my steps be fearless, like the wren. ~Andrew Peterson “Lenten Sonnet”
I’m the child of rainy Sundays. I watched time crawl Like an injured fly Over the wet windowpane. Or waited for a branch On a tree to stop shaking, While Grandmother knitted Making a ball of yarn Roll over like a kitten at her feet. I knew every clock in the house Had stopped ticking And that this day will last forever. ~Charles Simic “To Boredom”
I’m never bored on a quiet rainy Sunday.
My list of to-do’s and want-to-do’s and hope-to-do’s and someday-maybe-if-I’m-lucky-to-do’s is longer than the days still left to me.
I cherish these Sabbaths when the clock stops, and “to-do’s” will wait. Time suspends itself above me, ~dangling~ and the day lasts forever.
Sunday evening scaries in anticipation of Monday are prayed away.
On a drizzly day of rest and gratitude, the world is remade, eternity moves a little closer, my steps become more fearless and the new week is yet another part of the journey.
Does the rain have a father? Who fathers the drops of dew? Job 38:28
This Lenten season I reflect on the words of the 19th century southern spiritual hymn “What Wondrous Love is This”
One-Time
Monthly
Yearly
Make a one-time or recurring donation to support daily Barnstorming posts
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, but what is happening right now. Prior to phone apps, we scanned the skies, checked the barometer, 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 surreal 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 physical response to the heat, the cold, the dry, the wet. 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.
One-Time
Monthly
Yearly
Support daily Barnstorming posts by making a one-time or recurring donation
You can die for it- an idea, or the world. People have done so, brilliantly, letting their small bodies be bound to the stake, creating an unforgettable fury of light. But this morning, climbing the familiar hills in the familiar fabric of dawn, I thought of China, and India and Europe, and I thought how the sun blazes for everyone just so joyfully as it rises under the lashes of my own eyes, and I thought I am so many! What is my name? What is the name of the deep breath I would take over and over for all of us? Call it whatever you want, it is happiness, it is another one of the ways to enter fire. ~Mary Oliver “Sunrise”
I woke at 5:10 AM bathed in rose-light. When I looked out the window, I could tell something extraordinary was happening in the sky.
Here is what I saw: a turmoil of clouds to the northeast reflecting the fire of the sun, sunrise rays over our barn, and remarkably to the south west, a bright rainbow at dawn pouring glory onto our hill pasture.
But most remarkable of all is the deer standing in our pasture witnessing it all with me. She looked at me, then looked at the rainbow and wandered off to be drenched in its color, her thirst quenched.
So my thirsty soul longs to enter the fire of God’s promise to us. I breathe deeply of this.
One-Time
Monthly
Yearly
Make a one-time or recurring donation to support daily Barnstorming posts
Did you find everything you were looking for?Julie, the magenta-haired
checkout girl, asks, and no, I think, I didn’t find inner peace, or answers to
several questions I’ve been mulling, like are we headed for nuclear war and
does the rest of the world think America has gone bonkers and also, by the way,
I could not find the tofu bacon, and the chocolate sorbet shelf was empty
(I did find canned pumpkin in aisle four) but I am silent and smile at Julie who
seems to know what I’m thinking anyway so I hold back and muse on the view
of the bay this morning when we walked the dog and the parsnip soup we’ll
make for dinner and realize that total fulfillment probably jades the senses and
the bagger asks if I’d like help today carrying my groceries out to the car. ~Thomas R. Moore, “Finding Everything” from Red Stone Fragments
He was a new old man behind the counter, skinny, brown and eager. He greeted me like a long-lost daughter, as if we both came from the same world, someplace warmer and more gracious…
…his face lit up as if I were his prodigal daughter returning, coming back to the freezer bins in front of the register which were still and always filled with the same old Cable Car ice cream sandwiches and cheap frozen greens. Back to the knobs of beef and packages of hotdogs, these familiar shelves strung with potato chips and corn chips…
I lumbered to the case and bought my precious bottled water and he returned my change, beaming as if I were the bright new buds on the just-bursting-open cherry trees, as if I were everything beautiful struggling to grow, and he was blessing me as he handed me my dime over the counter and the plastic tub of red licorice whips. This old man who didn’t speak English beamed out love to me in the iron week after my mother’s death so that when I emerged from his store my whole cock-eyed life – what a beautiful failure ! – glowed gold like a sunset after rain. ~Alison Luterman from “At the Corner Store”
During these two years of COVID-time precautions, grocery shopping has been an extra ordeal for both the shoppers and the store workers. We remain hidden behind our masks – both the ones mandated by state regulations to be covering our faces, as well as the ones we usually hide behind while out and about in polite society.
This week as I shopped in one of our local grocery stores, I witnessed a particularly poignant scene. As I waited my six foot distance in the check out line, the older man ahead of me was greeted by the young cashier with the standard “Did you find everything you were looking for?” He looked at her from behind his mask and his eyes were obviously smiling as she scanned his groceries. He responded with: “I looked for world peace on your shelves, but it must have been sold out…”
She stopped scanning and looked directly at him for the first time, trying to discern if she misunderstood him or if he was mocking her or what. “Did you try Aisle 4?” she replied and they both laughed. They continued in light-hearted conversation as she continued scanning and once he had paid for his order and packed up his cart, he looked at her again.
“Thank for so much for coming to work today – I am so grateful for what you do.” He wheeled away his groceries and she stood, stunned, watching him go.
As I came up next, I looked at her watering eyes as she tried to compose herself and I said to her: “I’ll bet you don’t hear that often enough, do you?” She pulled herself together and shook her head, trying to make sense of the gift of words he had bestowed on her.
“No – like never,” she said as she scanned my groceries. “How could he possibly have known that I almost didn’t come to work today because it has been so stressful to be here? People are usually polite, but lately more and more have been so mean and refusing to put on their masks when I ask them to. No one seems to care about how others are feeling any more.”
She brushed away a tear and I paid for my groceries, and told her:
“I hope the rest of your work day is as great as that last customer. You’ve given me everything I was looking for today…”
And I emerged from the store feeling like I had scored a pot of gold like a sunset after rain.
last night’s rainbow through a windshield in pouring rain at 50mph
Try finding everything you are looking for in a book of beauty in words and photographs, available to order here:
One-Time
Monthly
Yearly
Make a one-time or recurring donation to support Barnstorming
A silence slipping around like death, Yet chased by a whisper, a sigh, a breath, One group of trees, lean, naked and cold, Inking their crest ‘gainst a sky green-gold, One path that knows where the corn flowers were; Lonely, apart, unyielding, one fir; And over it softly leaning down, One star that I loved ere the fields went brown. ~Angelina Weld Grimke “A Winter Twilight”
Some ask for the world and are diminished in the receiving of it. You gave me only this small pool that the more I drink from, the more overflows me with sourceless light. ~R.S. Thomas “Gift”from Experimenting with an Amen
I am astonished my thirstiness is slaked by such simple things as a moment of pink in the sky, a burst of birdsong, a tree standing steadfast on the hill through the seasons, a glimpse of tomorrow over the fading horizon of today.
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”
One-Time
Monthly
Yearly
Make a one-time or recurring donation to support Barnstorming
How often do we miss the fainter note Or fail to see the more exquisite hue, Blind to the tiny streamlet at our feet, Eyes fixed upon some other, further view. What chimes of harmonies escape our ears, How many rainbows must elude our sight, We see a field but do not see the grass, Each blade a miracle of shade and light. How then to keep the greater end in eye And watch the sunlight on the distant peak, And yet not tread on any leaf of love, Nor miss a word the eager children speak? Ah, what demand upon the narrow heart, To seek the whole, yet not ignore the part. ~Philip Britts “Sonnet 1”
I saw the lovely arch Of Rainbow span the sky, The gold sun burning As the rain swept by.
In bright-ringed solitude The showery foliage shone One lovely moment, And the Bow was gone. ~Walter De La Mare “The Rainbow”
We are born nearly blinded, focused solely on our emptiness – a hunger to be filled and our need to be held. As we grow, our focus sharpens to fall in love with those who feed and nurture us.
Eventually we discover, challenge and worship He who made us.
This world is often too much for us to take in as a whole — our exquisite view of shadow and light, color and gray, loneliness and embrace, sorrow and joy.
With more years and a broader vision, we scan for the finer details within the whole before it disappears with the changing light. Time’s a wasting (and so are we) as we try to capture it all with the lenses of our eyes and hearts.
The end of life comes too soon, when once again our vision blurs and the world fades away from view.
We hunger yet again to be filled and held.
And then heaven itself will seem almost too much to take in – our hearts full to bursting with light and promise for the rest of eternity.
A new book is available from Barnstorming – maybe you know someone who would enjoy a gift of light and color and insightful words? Order here:
Barnstorming 