Like a Blessing Vanished

wwudeer
above the construction zone on the south end of the Western Washington University campus

Empty and filled,
like the curling half-light of morning,
in which everything is still possible and so why not.

Filled and empty,
like the curling half-light of evening,
in which everything now is finished and so why not.

A root seeks water.
Tenderness only breaks open the earth.
This morning, out the window,
the deer stood like a blessing, then vanished.
~Jane Hirschfield from “Standing Deer”

wwudeer2

And think I must fall on my knees
to see them standing there,
Breasting the misty tide,
Sniffing the misty air.
~Charles Norman from “The Deer”

same pair, two months ago
same doe and fawn, two months ago, on the WWU campus

It’s Life We Harvest

mapleWWU
vine maple WWU

madronaberries
madrona tree berries –WWU

…still it’s not death that spends
So tenderly this treasure
To leaf-rich golden winds,
But life in lavish measure.

No, it’s not death this year
Since then and all the pain.
It’s life we harvest here
(Sun on the crimson vine).
The garden speaks your name.
We drink your joys like wine.
~May Sarton, from “The First Autumn”

burning bush-- WWU
burning bush– WWU
red fringed maple leaf --WWU
red fringed maple leaf –WWU

Is there something finished?  And some new beginning on the way?

I cried over beautiful things, knowing no beautiful thing lasts…
~Carl Sandburg, from “Falltime” and “Autumn Movement”

wwuheartleaf
WWU tree -Haskell Plaza

WWU tree

wwuyellow
WWU tree in Haskell plaza

I praise the fall:

It is the human season. On this sterile air
Do words outcarry breath: the sound goes on and on.
I hear a dead man’s cry from autumn long since gone.

I cry to you beyond upon this bitter air.
~Archiblad MacLeish from “Immortal Autumn”

College Way, WWU
College Way, WWU

 

 

 

Sublime Beauty

thistledowndrizzle

It is looking at things for a long time that ripens and gives you a deeper understanding… Everything that is really good and beautiful, of inward moral, spiritual and sublime beauty, in human beings and in their works, comes from God.
~Vincent Van Gogh

Enclosed field with rising sun --Van Gogh
Enclosed field with rising sun –Van Gogh

sunset9161

Let Them Be Left

abouttobloom

 

What would the world be, once bereft
Of wet and wildness?
Let them be left,O let them be left, wildness and wet,
Long live the weeds and the wildness yet.
~Gerard Manley Hopkins from “Inversnaid”

 

Maybe I identify with weeds as I too have grown a bit “excessive” in mid-life, growing unnecessarily and a bit fluffier than I need be.  Maybe I admire their ability to thrive where they land, resilient through all sorts of trials and deprivation.  Certainly they deserve appreciation for their wildly unique characteristics and their perfect imperfections.  Once I get to know them,  their beauty brings me joy.

I can only hope I too can be left,  my over-proliferation shown grace, my greediness granted mercy.

gonetoseed

 

In nature, nothing is perfect and everything is perfect.
~Alice Walker

 

lotsaweeds

 

…if the simple things in nature have a message you understand,
Rejoice, for your soul is alive.
~Eleanora Duse

 

weedybarn

Weeds are flowers too, once you get to know them.
~A. A. Milne

closedfist

 

…make no mistake:  the weeds will win; nature bats last.
~Robert M. Pyle

 

weedybarn2

Hope of Beauty Laid Bare

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999246_10151696763121119_1688897323_nWhy are we reading, if not in hope of beauty laid bare, life heightened and its deepest mystery probed? Can the writer isolate and vivify all in experience that most deeply engages our intellects and our hearts?  Why are we reading, if not in hope that the writer will magnify and dramatize our days, will illuminate and inspire us with wisdom, courage and the hope of meaningfulness, and press upon our minds the deepest mysteries, so we may feel again their majesty and power? What do we ever know that is higher than that power which, from time to time, seizes our lives, and which reveals us startlingly to ourselves as creatures set down here bewildered? Why does death so catch us by surprise, and why love? We still and always want waking.
~Annie Dillard from “Write Till You Drop’

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Blossomfoam Miracle

from Baslee Troutman Fine Art Collection
…a little dogwood tree is losing its mind;
overflowing with blossomfoam,
like a sudsy mug of beer;
like a bride ripping off her clothes,
dropping snow white petals to the ground in clouds,
so Nature’s wastefulness seems quietly obscene.
It’s been doing that all week:
making beauty,
and throwing it away,
and making more.
~Tony Hoagland from “A Color of the Sky”

After all, I don’t see why I am always asking for private, individual, selfish miracles when every year there are miracles like white dogwood.
~Anne Morrow Lindbergh

The Beauty of Longing

photo by Nate Gibson
photo by Nate Gibson
photo by Nate Gibson
photo by Nate Gibson

Are we to look at cherry blossoms only in full bloom,
the moon only when it is cloudless? 
To long for the moon while looking on the rain,
to lower the blinds and be unaware
of the passing of the spring –

these are even more deeply moving. 
Branches about to blossom
or gardens strewn with flowers
are worthier of our admiration.

~Yoshida Kenko

I know this longing as I know my own back yard~
waiting for a view of the mountain from my kitchen window

There are more days its snowy peak is hidden
than days it is blossom-stark floating cloud-like above the horizon of our barn roof

Visitors to the farm are too often told “the mountain is right there”
as I point to a bank of nondescript gray clouds

My loving and longing for it, my knowing it is always there, in hiding,
moves me more than the days it is simply given to me.

The beauty of anticipation,
confident of fulfillment to come
my thirstiness
to be slaked
my hunger to be
satisfied.

photo by Nate Gibson
photo by Nate Gibson
photo by Emily Gibson
photo by Emily Gibson

Lenten Grace — Responsible Serenity

marchsunset

We live in an imperfect world, with imperfect characters to match. Our imperfections should not keep us from dreaming of better things, or even from trying, within our limits, to be better stewards of the soil, and more ardent strivers after beauty and a responsible serenity.
~Jane Kenyon from “In the Garden of My Dreams”

Beauty is right outside my back door, whether it is in a misty dawn moment or an early twilight serenade.  It heals me after an imperfect day and an imperfect night’s sleep.

Today I will strive to be a steward for serenity, aiding its growth and helping it flourish.

Never perfect but not giving up.  Never perfect but serene with the responsibility.

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Lenten Grace — Weeds and Wilderness

belindarose
The darksome burn, horseback brown,
His rollrock highroad roaring down,
In coop and in comb the fleece of his foam
Flutes and low to the lake falls home.

A windpuff-bonnet of fawn-froth
Turns and twindles over the broth
Of a pool so pitchblack, fell-frowning,
It rounds and rounds Despair to drowning.

Degged with dew, dappled with dew,
Are the groins of the braes that the brook treads through,
Wiry heathpacks, flitches of fern,
And the beadbonny ash that sits over the burn.

What would the world be, once bereft
Of wet and wildness? Let them be left,
O let them be left, wildness and wet;
Long live the weeds and the wilderness yet.
~Gerard Manley Hopkins “Inversnaid”

There is despair in the wilderness of untamed hearts.
Such wildness lies just beneath the surface;
it rounds and rounds, almost out of reach. 
How are we spared drowning in its pitchblack pool?
How can we thrill to the beauty rather than be sucked into the darkness?
He came not to destroy the world’s wildness,
but to pull us, gasping,
from its unforgiving clutches as we sink in deep.
As weeds surviving in the wilderness,
we must grow, flourish, and witness to a wild world bereft.
O let us be left.
Let us be left.
photo by Kathy Yates
photo by Kathy Yates

Longing for Longing

“It was when I was happiest that I longed most…
The sweetest thing in all my life has been the longing…
to find the place where all the beauty came from.”

~C.S. Lewis

Like children who long for Christmas,
anticipating for weeks
what that moment will be like
when they see gifts piled high under the tree–

we revel in our longing.

It is the sweetness
of “already but not yet”,
knowing with eager expectancy
there is more to come,
just a bit out of reach
but still intensely seen and felt,
something more wonderful,
a place more beautiful than we can ever imagine…