Winged With Celestial Azure

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Thou art the Iris, fair among the fairest,
   Who, armed with golden rod
And winged with the celestial azure, bearest
   The message of some God.
~Henry Wadsworth Longfellow from Flower-de-Luce

At the end of my suffering
there was a door.

Hear me out: that which you call death
I remember.

Overhead, noises, branches of the pine shifting.
Then nothing. The weak sun
flickered over the dry surface.

It is terrible to survive
as consciousness
buried in the dark earth.

Then it was over: that which you fear, being
a soul and unable
to speak, ending abruptly, the stiff earth
bending a little.  And what I took to be
birds darting in low shrubs.

You who do not remember
passage from the other world
I tell you I could speak again: whatever
returns from oblivion returns
to find a voice:

from the center of my life came
a great fountain, deep blue
shadows on azure sea water.
~Louise Glück “The Wild Iris”

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 “Blue Iris”

May your blooms be floriferous and in good form,
Distinctive, with good substance, flare, and airborne,
With standards and falls that endure, never torn.
May you display many buds and blooms sublime,
In graceful proportion on strong stalks each day,
Gently floating above the fans and the fray.
May you too reach toward the moon and stars,
Bloom after bloom, many seasons in the sun,
Enjoying your life, health, and each loved one,
Until your living days are artfully done.
~Georgia Gudykunst  “Iris Blessing”

Whenever I allow my eye to peer inside
an iris, it takes all my attention.


I need a flotation device
and depth finder as
I’m likely to get lost,
sweeping and swooning
through inner space
of complex tunnels, canyons and corners,
then coming up for air and diving in again
to journey into exotic locales
draped in silken hues.

This fairy land of petals on a stem,
is birthed by the creative genius of God.

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Revery Alone Will Do…

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To make a prairie it takes a clover and one bee, a
One clover, and a bee,
And revery.
The revery alone will do,
If bees are few.
~Emily Dickinson

Bees do have a smell, you know, and if they don’t they should, for their feet are dusted with spices from a million flowers.
~Ray Bradbury from Dandelion Wine

Pollinators are having a rough time of it these days, combating man-made insecticides or failing to find flowering weeds to visit given the wide-spread use of herbicides. Plus, there is the American penchant for mowing grassy landscapes to look perfectly uniform and weed-free.

When I see a honey or bumble bee happily doing its job, it is a cause for celebration.

I was thrilled to see the latest research reported today demonstrating the ability of a flowering plant, like a snapdragon in the study, to “hear” (through vibro-acoustic signals) the buzz of an approaching pollinator, responding instantly by increasing its nectar volume and sweetness.
The postulated feedback mechanism is that pollinators will be more attracted to a plant that “rewards” their visit, thereby increasing the likelihood of ongoing pollination visits and survival of further generations of both creatures.

This world depends on a revery of communication we can only begin to understand – between plant to plant, plant to insect — a daydream of connections bringing the spicy smell of pollen from a million flowers to the lowly feet of the bee, which generates more of both as well as honey for you and me.
May it be, may it be, may it bee…

May we know such reverie.

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Bubble Wrapped

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We wove hip-high field grass 
into tunnels 

knotting the tops 
of bunched handfuls the drooping 
heads tied together. 

My seven siblings and I 
sheltered ourselves

inside these labyrinths 
in a galaxy of grasses.
~Heather Cahoon “Shelter”

As a child I enjoyed exploring our hay field to find the tallest patch of grass. There, like a dog turning circles before a nap, I’d trample down the waving stems that stretched up almost to my eyes, and create a grass nest, cozy enough for just me. 

I’d lie down in this green fortress, gazing up at the blue sky, and watch the clouds drift lazily by. I’d suck on a hollow stem or two, to savor the bitter grass juice. Scattered around my grassy cage, attached to the broad grass stems, would be innumerable clumps of white foam. I’d tease out the hidden green spittle bugs with their little black eyes from their white frothy bubble encasement. I hoped to watch them make foam, to actually see them in action doing what they do best, but they would leap away.

The grassy nest was a time of retreat from the world by being buried inside the world. I felt protected, surrounded, encompassed and free –at least until I heard my mother calling for me from the house, or a rain shower started, driving me to run for cover, or my dog found me by sniffing out my green path.

It has been years since I hid in a grass fort or tried to defroth spit bugs. I am overdue, I’m sure.

Over twenty years ago, on a spring morning, I was driving into work on one of our county’s rural two-lane roads, savoring a grumbly mood and wishing I was heading somewhere else on a bright and sunny day. My mind was busy with the anticipation of the workday when I noticed a slight shift to the right over the fog line by the driver in the car ahead of me. Suddenly I realized why, in a moment of stark clarity. 

An empty gravel truck and trailer rig was approaching as it came over a hill, its driver seemingly unaware his huge trailer was starting to whip back and forth behind him. As the huge rig approached me, the trailer was coming back to my side of the road at a nearly ninety degree angle from the truck, filling up the entire lane in front of me. 

I had no choice but to run my car off the road into a grassy field to avoid being hit head-on by the still-attached but runaway trailer. Only by chance were there no deep ditches at that particular point in the road. My car dove right into tall grass, enfolded in a shroud of green, shielding me from a tangle of metal and certain death. 

It was a near miss, but a miss nonetheless.

I sat still for a moment, gathering my wits and picking up what was left of my frayed nerves from where they been strewn about. All I could see in front and around me was grass, just like my little childhood fortresses. 

It was very tempting to stay right there, hidden away in the safety of the grass, as if I had been a spittle bug wrapped in a foam cocoon, my heart racing with the relief of still being alive.

Instead I was able to drive out of the grassy field, and go on to work to do what I had been grumbling about that day, abruptly made aware of the privilege of having a life to live, a job to go to, and a grassy field perfectly situated to swallow me up into safety.

It was only later, as I called my husband about what had taken place, that I wept. Until then, I couldn’t stop smiling. I felt encased in liquid bubble wrap, foam-protected by One bigger and stronger, in whose image I had been made.

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Feeling Them Resting There

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The sunlight now lay over the valley perfectly still.
I went over to the graveyard beside the church
and found them under the old cedars…
I am finding it a little hard to say that I felt them resting there,
but I did…

I saw that, for me, this country would always be populated
with presences and absences,
presences of absences,
the living and the dead.
The world as it is
would always be a reminder
of the world that was,
and of the world that is to come.
~Wendell Berry in Jayber Crow

In great deeds, something abides. 
On great fields, something stays. 
Forms change and pass; bodies disappear; 
but spirits linger, 
to consecrate ground for the vision-place of souls. 

And reverent men and women from afar, 
and generations that know us not and that we know not of, 
heart-drawn to see where and by whom great things were suffered and done for them, shall come to this deathless field, 
to ponder and dream; and lo!
the shadow of a mighty presence shall wrap them in its bosom, 
and the power of the vision pass into their souls. 

This is the great reward of service. 
To live, far out and on, in the life of others;
this is the mystery of the Christ,
–to give life’s best for such high sake
that it shall be found again unto life eternal.
~Major-General Joshua Chamberlain, Gettysburg, Pennsylvania 1889

A box of over 700 letters, exchanged between my parents from late 1941 to mid-1945, sat unopened for six decades.

I started reading. I felt them resting in those inked words.

My parents barely knew each other before marrying quickly on Christmas Eve 1942 – the haste due to the uncertain future for a newly trained Second Lieutenant in the Marine Corps. They only had a few weeks together before she returned home to her rural teaching position and he readied himself to be shipped out for the island battles to come.

They had no idea they would not see each other for another 30+ months or even see each other again at all. They had no idea their marriage would fall apart 35 years later and they would reunite a decade after the divorce for five more years together before Dad died of cancer at age 73.

A presence of absence: the letters do contain the long-gone but still-familiar voices of my parents, but they are the words and worries of youngsters of 20 and 21, barely prepared for the horrors to come from war and interminable waiting. When he was fighting battles on Tarawa, Saipan, and Tinian, no letters or news would be received for a month or more, otherwise they tried to write each other daily, though with minimal news to share due to military censorship. They speak mostly of their desire for a normal life together rather than a routine centered on mailbox, pen and paper and waiting – lots and lots of waiting.

I’m not sure what I hoped to find in these letters. Perhaps I hoped for flowery romantic whisperings and the poetry of longing and loneliness. Instead I am reading plain spoken words from two people who somehow made it through those awful years to make my sister and brother and myself possible.

Our inheritance is contained in this musty box of words bereft of poetry. But decades later my heart is moved by these letters – I carefully refold them back into their envelopes and replace them gently back in order. A six cent airmail stamp – in fact hundreds and hundreds of them – was a worthwhile investment in the future, not only for themselves and their family to come, but for generations of U.S. citizens who tend to take their freedom for granted.

Thank you, Dad and Mom, for the early years together you gave up to make today possible for us and the generations to follow.

I hear the mountain birds
The sound of rivers singing
A song I’ve often heard
It flows through me now
So clear and so loud
I stand where I am
And forever I’m dreaming of home
I feel so alone, I’m dreaming of home

It’s carried in the air
The breeze of early morning
I see the land so fair
My heart opens wide
There’s sadness inside
I stand where I am
And forever I’m dreaming of home
I feel so alone, I’m dreaming of home

This is no foreign sky
I see no foreign light
But far away am I
From some peaceful land
I’m longing to stand
A hand in my hand
…forever I’m dreaming of home
I feel so alone, I’m dreaming of home
~Lori Barth and Philippe Rombi “I’m Dreaming of Home”

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More Precious than Roses

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I am not resigned to the shutting away
of loving hearts in the hard ground.
So it is, and so it will be, for so it has been, time out of mind:
Into the darkness they go, the wise and the lovely. Crowned
With lilies and with laurel they go; but I am not resigned.

Lovers and thinkers, into the earth with you.
Be one with the dull, the indiscriminate dust.
A fragment of what you felt, of what you knew,
A formula, a phrase remains,—but the best is lost.

The answers quick and keen, the honest look,
the laughter, the love,—
They are gone. They are gone to feed the roses.
Elegant and curled
Is the blossom.
Fragrant is the blossom. I know.
But I do not approve. 
More precious was the light in your eyes
than all the roses in the world.

Down, down, down into the darkness of the grave
Gently they go, the beautiful, the tender, the kind;
Quietly they go, the intelligent, the witty, the brave.
I know. But I do not approve. And I am not resigned.
~Edna St. Vincent Millay “Dirge Without Music”

Each Memorial Day weekend without fail,
we gather with family, have lunch, reminisce,
and trek to a cemetery high above Puget Sound
to catch up with our relatives who lie there, still.

Some for over 110 years, some for barely more than a decade,
some we knew and loved and miss every day,
others not so much as they are unknown to us
except on genealogy charts,
names and dates and stones and stories:

the red-haired great-grandmother who died too young,
the aunt who was eight when lymphoma took her,
the grandmother who dreamed of world travel too late,
the great-grandfather Yukon river boat captain,
the grandfather logger and stump farmer,
the great aunt unmarried school teacher who hid an oil well,
the two in-laws who forever lie next to each other
but could not co-exist in the same room while they lived and breathed.

Yet we know each of these
(as we know ourselves and others)

could be tender and kind, though flawed and broken,
had been beautiful and strong, though wrinkled and frail,
was hopeful and faithful, though too soon in the ground.

We know this about them
as we know it about ourselves:
someday we too will feed roses,
the light in our eyes transformed into elegant swirls
emitting the fragrant scent of heaven.

No one asks if we approve.
Nor am I resigned to this
though I know:
So it is, so it has been, so it will be for me
someday.

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That Kind of Day

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If ever there were a spring day so perfect,
so uplifted by a warm intermittent breeze
that it made you want to throw
open all the windows in the house
and unlatch the door to the canary’s cage,
indeed, rip the little door from its jamb,
a day when the cool brick paths
and the garden bursting with peonies
seemed so etched in sunlight
that you felt like taking
a hammer to the glass paperweight
on the living room end table,
releasing the inhabitants
from their snow-covered cottage
so they could walk out,
holding hands and squinting
into this larger dome of blue and white,
well, today is just that kind of day.
~Billy Collins  “Today”

The Truman Show was about someone stuck in a “perfect” world,
safely contained, in a perpetual snow globe.

Today I want to release the caged and captive,
to be immersed in what awaits outside.

Indeed, Someone sprung me loose to find my Spring,
in one breath-taking and breath-giving moment.

Let’s open wide the windows…

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What a Little Thing

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Four ducks on a pond,
A grass-bank beyond,
A blue sky of spring,
White clouds on the wing;
What a little thing
To remember for years
To remember with tears!
~William Allingham “A Memory”

Tell no one of the wonders
of the Mallard duck’s green head,
how it glistens in the sun
against the gentle red
of the Willow branches budding
in the golden spring sun,
as they paddle through the waters
where the creek has come undone.

Tell no one of the beauty
of the butterflies that flit
through the flowers not yet budding
on the little sandy spit,
how their wings will keep them searching
for the hope that blooms in Spring
as they hover over what will be
a very lovely thing.

Tell no one of the glory
or the warmth of young spring’s sun,
of the joy that comes from watching
the smallest creatures run,
of the life that is teeming
in the wake of newborn day,
of the power that hope holds
over all we do and say.

Tell no one of the miracle
that is this daily life,
that cuts you to the quick
as if with sharpest knife.
Tell no one what you notice,
into which your wonder delves.
Tell no one of these things —
let them know it for themselves.
~Elizabeth Wickland “Tell No One”

so much depends
upon

a red wheel
barrow

glazed with rain
water

beside the white
chickens

~William Carlos Williams, “The Red Wheelbarrow” from The Collected Poems of William Carlos Williams, Volume I, 1909-1939

so much depends
upon me riding a red trike
chased by my little brother

now rusty memories frozen in time
and cobwebs

such a little thing is
never to be forgotten

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Be Quiet as a Feather

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Today I’m flying low and I’m
not saying a word.
I’m letting all the voodoos of ambition sleep.

The world goes on as it must,
the bees in the garden rumbling a little,
the fish leaping, the gnats getting eaten.
And so forth.

But I’m taking the day off.
Quiet as a feather.
I hardly move though really I’m traveling
a terrific distance.

Stillness. One of the doors
into the temple.
~Mary Oliver “Today” from A Thousand Mornings

The moon drops one or two feathers into the field.   
The dark wheat listens.
Be still.
Now.
There they are, the moon’s young, trying
Their wings.

I stand alone by an elder tree, I do not dare breathe
Or move.
I listen.
The wheat leans back toward its own darkness,
And I lean toward mine.
~James Wright from “Beginning”

photo by Bob Tjoelker

Wherever it was
I was supposed to be
this morning—
whatever it was I said
I would be doing—
I was standing
at the edge of the field—
I was hurrying
through my own soul,
opening its dark doors—
I was leaning out;
I was listening.
— Mary Oliver from “Mockingbirds” from New and Selected Poems, Volume 2

“Hope” is the thing with feathers –
That perches in the soul –
And sings the tune without the words –
And never stops – at all –
~Emily Dickinson

Some days warrant stillness. Today is one.

As I walked our farm driveway,
I found this barn owl feather,
dropped from a passing wing overnight –

The past months have echoed loudly with ruckus and noise —
much too overwhelming and almost deafening.

Today I seek to be quiet as this feather,
lying silently in place, not saying a word.

I might actually begin to listen and hear again.  

A funny thing about feathers:
alone, each one is mere fluff.
Together — feathers create lift and power,
the strength and will to soar beyond the tether of gravity
and the pull of our inevitable mortality.

Joined and united,
we can rise above and fly away
as far as our life and breath can take us.

May peace be still.

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A Sentence That Changes Your Life

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As we walk into words that have waited for us to enter them, so
the meadow, muddy with dreams, is gathering itself together

and trying, with difficulty, to remember how to make wildflowers.
Imperceptibly heaving with the old impatience, it knows

for certain that two horses walk upon it, weary of hay.
The horses, sway-backed and self important, cannot design

how the small white pony mysteriously escapes the fence everyday.
This is the miracle just beyond their heavy-headed grasp,

and they turn from his nuzzling with irritation. Everything
is crying out. Two crows, rising from the hill, fight

and caw-cry in mid-flight, then fall and light on the meadow grass
bewildered by their weight. A dozen wasps drone, tiny prop planes,

sputtering into a field the farmer has not yet plowed,
and what I thought was a phone, turned down and ringing,

is the knock of a woodpecker for food or warning, I can’t say.
I want to add my cry to those who would speak for the sound alone.

But in this world, where something is always listening, even
murmuring has meaning, as in the next room you moan

in your sleep, turning into late morning. My love, this might be
all we know of forgiveness, this small time when you can forget

what you are. There will come a day when the meadow will think
suddenly, water, root, blossom, through no fault of its own,
and the horses will lie down in daisies and clover. Bedeviled,
human, your plight, in waking, is to choose from the words

that even now sleep on your tongue, and to know that tangled
among them and terribly new is the sentence that could change your life.
~Marie Howe “The Meadow” from The Good Thief

I am constantly looking for the sentence that will change my life.

I search high and low:
in books, on tape, in sermons,
and in everyday conversation.

I listen.

I realize it will not be a brand new revelation.
Instead, it is a very very old sentence:

“I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.”
John 8:12

I look for the Light in the most unexpected places, and if I find it, I always try to share it here…

What is a sentence that has changed your life?

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Ridiculously Courageous

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So I can’t save the world— 
can’t save even myself, 
can’t wrap my arms around 
every frightened child, can’t 
foster peace among nations, 
can’t bring love to all who 
feel unlovable. 

So I practice opening my heart 
right here in this room and being gentle 
with my insufficiency. I practice 
walking down the street heart first. 
And if it is insufficient to share love, 
I will practice loving anyway. 
I want to converse about truth, 
about trust. I want to invite compassion 
into every interaction. 
One willing heart can’t stop a war. 
One willing heart can’t feed all the hungry. 
And sometimes, daunted by a task too big, 
I ask myself, What’s the use of trying? 
But today, the invitation is clear: 
to be ridiculously courageous in love. 
To open the heart like a lilac in May, 
knowing freeze is possible 
and opening anyway. 
To take love seriously. 
To give love wildly. 
To race up to the world 
as if I were a puppy, 
adoring and unjaded, 
stumbling on my own exuberance. 
To feel the shock of indifference, 
of anger, of cruelty, of fear, 
and stay open. To love as if it matters, 
as if the world depends on it. 
~Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer “Because” From The Unfolding

I can’t stop all the pain and suffering in the world or bring peace between angry nations.

But I can make a difference to those around me. It won’t stop a war or cure all diseases, but I can be ridiculously courageous in my compassion for others.

As we’ve been traveling for the past week, I’ve had many opportunities to treat others like I hope to be treated. I’ve tried to listen carefully, to express gratitude for the efforts others make. I try to smile more when I’m among strangers and meet their gaze, which takes the greatest courage of all for an introvert like me.

So I’ll take lessons from puppies I’ve known: to wag and wiggle and treat everyone as a best friend – with great joy and exuberance. It matters. Peace in the world depends on it.

photo by Brandon Dieleman
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