I love at eventide to walk alone
Down narrow lanes o’erhung with dewy thorn…
Right glad to meet the evening’s dewy veil
And see the light fade into glooms around.
~John Clare from “Summer Moods”
Tag: barn
A Light in the Barn
The floor was mouse-grey, smooth, chilly concrete.
There were no windows, just two narrow shafts
Of gilded motes, crossing, from air-holes slit
High in each gable. The one door meant no draughts
All summer when the zinc burned like an oven.
A scythe’s edge, a clean spade, a pitchfork’s prongs:
Slowly bright objects formed when you went in.
~Seamus Heaney from “The Barn”
Imperishable Bliss
But in contentment I still feel
The need of some imperishable bliss.
~Wallace Stevens from “Sunday Morning”
Earthly contentment~
whether a full stomach
or adequate bank account
or a covering of snow~
won’t last.
whether a full stomach
or adequate bank account
or a covering of snow~
won’t last.
May I not settle in comfort,
but seek to fill
my continual need
with what will not perish,
even as the snow melts
and the light fades,
to rest assured,
I will be changed.
but seek to fill
my continual need
with what will not perish,
even as the snow melts
and the light fades,
to rest assured,
I will be changed.
Farm Rhythms and Seasons
When I pull open the barn doors,
every morning
and each evening,
as my grandfathers did
one hundred years ago,
seven rumbling voices
rise in greeting.
We exchange scents,
nuzzle each others’ ears.
I do my chores faithfully
as my grandfathers once did–
draw fresh water
into buckets,
wheel away
the pungent mess underfoot,
release an armful of summer
from the bale,
reach under heavy manes
to stroke silken necks.
I don’t depend
on our horses’ strength
and willingness to
don harness
to carry me to town
or move the logs
or till the soil
as my grandfathers did.
Instead,
these soft eyed souls,
born on this farm
two long decades ago,
are simply grateful
for my constancy
morning and night
to serve their needs
until the day comes
they need no more.
And I depend on them
to depend on me
to be there
to open the doors;
their low whispering welcome
gives voice
to the blessings of
living on a farm
ripe with rhythms and seasons,
as if today and tomorrow are
just like one hundred years ago.
- photo by Emily Dieleman
Torn By Twine
My hands are torn
by baling twine, not nails, and my side is pierced
by my ulcer, not a lance.
~Hayden Carruth from “Emergency Haying”
Miles of twine encircle
tons of hay in our barn,
daily loosed free of grasses
and hung up to use again
in myriad ways:
tightening a sagging fence
replacing a broken bucket handle
snugging a horse blanket belt.
It is the duct tape of the barn
when duct tape won’t work;
a substitute made beautiful
by a morning fog’s weeping.
Shine Through
Let the light of late afternoon
shine through chinks in the barn, moving
up the bales as the sun moves down.
~Jane Kenyon, “Let Evening Come”
A Kindly and Homely Month
There is no season when such pleasant and sunny spots may be lighted on,
and produce so pleasant an effect on the feelings, as now in October.
The sunshine is peculiarly genial;
and in sheltered places, as on the side of a bank, or of a barn or house,
one becomes acquainted and friendly with the sunshine.
It seems to be of a kindly and homely nature.
And the green grass strewn with a few withered leaves looks the more green and beautiful for them.
~Nathaniel Hawthorne
If I were a month, I would want to be October…
A kindly and homely nature, with comfortable temperatures and a bit foggy,
with flashes of burnt umber, misty gold in the relinquishing light.
Every Cubic Inch of Space
Why, who makes much of miracles?
As to me, I know nothing else but miracles…
To me every hour of the light and dark is a miracle
Every cubic inch of space is a miracle,
Every square yard of the surface of the earth is spread with the same,
Every foot of the interior swarms with the same.
To me [all] is a continual miracle…
~Walt Whitman
When I go to our 100+ year old hay barn to fetch a couple of bales for the horses, I stop to marvel at the continual miracle of this barn. It is breaking down along its roof crest, yes. It is sorely in need of another coat of paint, yes. It has leaks where the winter winds have blown shingles off so the rain and snow come straight indoors, yes.
Yet these old growth beams and rafters, recycled from a nearby dismantled saw mill over a century ago, continue to do their job of holding up the world encased within. This home of pigeons, swallows, bats, barn owls, mice, rats, raccoons, skunks and possum remains a steadfast sanctuary for the harvest of our hill. For decades it has remained steep and silent, serene and solace-filled.
Every cubic inch, the streams of light and the shadowy dark, inside and out, is wonder-full, even when it is empty in the late spring and especially when packed to the rafters, as it is now, with this summer’s hay crop. The miraculous is grown, cut, dried, raked, baled, hauled, stacked and piece by piece, stem by stem, as it sustains living creatures through three seasons of the year.
I have the privilege of entering here every day and witnessing the miracle year after year.
I know nothing else but miracles, despite my own sagging, my weakening foundation and some *occasional* inopportune leaking of my own.
I know where and to whom I belong.
There is not a square inch in the whole domain of our human existence over which Jesus, sovereign over all, does not cry “Mine!”
~Abraham Kuyper
Silken Ladder
The spider, dropping down from twig,
Unfolds a plan of her devising,
A thin premeditated rig
To use in rising.
And all that journey down through space,
In cool descent and loyal hearted,
She spins a ladder to the place
From where she started.
Thus I, gone forth as spiders do
In spider’s web a truth discerning,
Attach one silken thread to you
For my returning.
~E.B. White “Natural History”
No matter where I go to complete farm chores, I’m getting a face full of spider web and often a spider or two or three in my hair. The spinners are very busy in the night dropping from rafters and branches, leaping courageously into uncharted territory with only their thread as rescue cable.
I am not so brave as they, nor as industrious. Instead, I’m lollygagging in the art gallery of their fine work, appreciating the abundant crop of silken ladders and hammocks, and harvesting what I can on this page.
I’m drawn back morning after morning to see what they’ve caught and how well they endure. As long as I keep my face out of their masterpiece, all is well.
All is well.
The Trivial Transfigured
A sudden light transfigures a trivial thing, a weather-vane, a wind-mill, a winnowing flail, the dust in the barn door; a moment,- -and the thing has vanished, because it was pure effect; but it leaves a relish behind it, a longing that the accident may happen again.
~Walter Pater from “The Renaissance”
The accident of light does happen, again and again, but when I least expect it. I need to be ready for it; in a blink, it can be gone. Yet in that moment, everything is changed and transformed forever. The thing itself, trivial and transient becomes something other, merely because of how it is illuminated. And so am I, trivial and transient, lit from outside myself, transfigured by a love and sacrifice that I can never expect or deserve. I need to be ready for it.
Barnstorming 