Tag: bloom

A Speechless Receptacle

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I can write down words, like these, softly...
Give me a little time…
It doesn’t happen all of a sudden, you know.

…my heart panics not to be,
as I long to be,
the empty, waiting, pure, speechless receptacle.
~Mary Oliver from the title poem from “Blue Iris”

To plunge headlong into
the heart of a blossom, its amber eyes
inscrutably focusing on your own,
magnified by a lens of dew.
Whose scent, invisible,
drowns you in opulence, and for which
you can find nothing adequate to say.

You sense that you are loved wholly,
yet are quite unable to understand why.
But then, you lift your face,
creased with the ordinary, to a heaven
that is breaking into blue,
and find your contentment utterly beyond
telling, unspeakable, uncontained.
~Luci Shaw from “Speechless” from  Sea Glass

There are days we live
as if death were nowhere
in the background; from joy
to joy to joy, from wing to wing,
from blossom to blossom to
impossible blossom, to sweet impossible blossom.
~Li-Young Lee, last stanza of “From Blossoms” from Rose.

To live as if
death were nowhere in the future,
instead, to bud, emerge, and blossom,
even when thirsting in the desert of discouragement –
Christ is here, waiting.
 
We are not dying,
but become alive in Him:
an amazing impossible flowering.

I peer inside each bloom as it opens,
needing a flotation device
and depth finder
as I’m likely to get lost,
sweeping and swooning
through the inner space
of life’s deep tunnels,
canyons and corners,
coming up for air before diving in again
to journey into exotic locales
draped in silken hues
~this heaven on a stem~
to immerse and emerge
in the possibilities
of God’s impossible blossom.

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Despite the Mess

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More than the fuchsia funnels breaking out
of the crabapple tree, more than the neighbor’s
almost obscene display of cherry limbs shoving
their cotton candy-colored blossoms to the slate
sky of Spring rains, it’s the greening of the trees
that really gets to me. When all the shock of white
and taffy, the world’s baubles and trinkets, leave
the pavement strewn with the confetti of aftermath,
the leaves come. Patient, plodding, a green skin
growing over whatever winter did to us, a return
to the strange idea of continuous living despite
the mess of us, the hurt, the empty. Fine then,
I’ll take it, the tree seems to say, a new slick leaf
unfurling like a fist to an open palm, I’ll take it all.
~Ada Limón “Instructions on Not Giving Up”

It wasn’t until I paused under the huge silver maple tree in front of our house that I began to notice not the blossoms, but the way the leaves were unfurling. How suddenly a tree transformed back into a tree, with all its good green leaves. It felt like a lesson in resilience. The tree wasn’t giving up. The tree was just going to keep doing its tree thing. Noticing those leaves felt like the first moment of breath I’d had all winter. Under that tree, the line “it’s the greening of the trees that really gets to me” came to me.
~Ada Limón writing about how “Instructions on Not Giving Up” came to her

I watch daily as our farm’s trees reawaken in the spring. Some, like the maples and chestnuts turn green in April. The walnuts stay naked well into May, quite bohemian compared to their glossy green neighbors.

New growth is always an encouragement to me, especially after a brutally cold winter when branches have broken off in the snows or a tree has toppled over in exhaustion from resisting the winter wind.

As leaves swell and begin to unwrap in the spring sun, trees are feeling what I feel: the need for fresh air and renewal, absorbing the warmth of the sun while new nutrients surge in my sap.

Most trees find it is easy being green, as that is who they are and that is who I am. Some are colorful show-offs, putting me to shame for my plainness. They bloom their hearts out with the joy of living yet another spring, exuberant and wild, and oh so messy.

The trees’ resilience captures my heart. Dogwood and crabapple petals follow us inside the house stuck to our shoes, left scattered here and there on the floor. Perhaps they think they can remain bright and beautiful inside a different wooden home. I sweep them up to put them back outside on the ground where they, like I will someday, become part of the soil once again.

Exuberant in my messy plainness.

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There is a tree beyond this world
In it’s ancient roots this song is curled
I am the fool whose life’s been spent
Between what’s said and what is meant
~Carrie Newcomer

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Just Pay Attention

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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”

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

To plunge headlong into
the heart of a blossom, its amber eyes
inscrutably focusing on your own,
magnified by a lens of dew.
Whose scent, invisible,
drowns you in opulence, and for which
you can find nothing adequate to say.

You sense that you are loved wholly,
yet are quite unable to understand why.
But then, you lift your face,
creased with the ordinary, to a heaven
that is breaking into blue,
and find your contentment utterly beyond
telling, unspeakable, uncontained.
~Luci Shaw from “Speechless” from  Sea Glass

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 “An Iris Blessing”

Whenever I allow my eye to peer into
an iris, it takes all my attention:
I need a flotation device
and depth finder.
I’m likely to get lost,
sweeping and swooning
through inner space
of tunnels, canyons and corners,
coming up for air and diving in again
to journey into exotic locales
draped in silken hues
~this fairy land on a stem~
Patching a few words together,
I’m immersed in the possibilities,
blessed by such an impossible blossom.

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The Flower Unfurled

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Mid-January and still
the last amaryllis refuses.
Planted in October,
it just now raises
a green bud tip
to the bright window. 
Inside the plain package
waits a blaring red,
the flower furled,
held like breath
in the trumpeter’s body.
~Francesca Bell “Late Blooming” from What Small Sound

Sometimes when you’re in a dark place
you think you’ve been buried,
but actually you’ve been planted.
~Christine Caine

It came home with me over a month ago,
a non-descript bulb with a green sword-blade shoot
emerging shyly from the top.

Its care and feeding
was a lot of “watch and wait”
and just a little water.
It has been our winter morning entertainment
as we munched down cereal,
gauging how many centimeters
it rose over night.

It took over the kitchen table~
two tall stalks topped with tight-fisted buds
which opened oh-so-slowly over several days
like a drowsy student after Christmas break,
not yet ready to meet and greet the world
but once the commitment to wake is made,
there is no other blossoming quite like it anywhere.

How can we possibly understand,
while still buried in the dark,
that we too rest planted in holy ground,
waiting for the wakening
that calls us forth to bloom, and fruit, and amaze.

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Such Fear and Fascination

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My fuchsia is a middle-aged woman
who’s had fourteen children, and though
she could do it again, she’s rather tired.

All through the summer, new blooms.
I’m amazed. Yet the purple and crimson
have paled. Some leaves are yellowed or withering.

The new buds look weaker and smaller,
like menopause babies. But still
she’s a gallant fine creature performing her function.

– That’s how they talk about women,
and I heard myself using the same sort of language.
Then I understood my love for August:
its exhausted fertility
after glut and harvest.

Out in the garden, playing
at being a peasant forced
to slave until dark with a child on my back

another at the breast and probably
pregnant, I remember
wondering if I’d ever manage

the rites of passage from girl
to woman: fear and fascination
hard to choose between.

Thirty years later, I pick the crumpled flowers
off the fuchsia plant and water it
as if before the shrine
of two unknown grandmothers –
and my mother, who was a fourteenth child.
~Ruth Fainlight “My Fuschia”

Flower in the crannied wall,
I pluck you out of the crannies,
I hold you here, root and all, in my hand,
Little flower – but if I could understand what you are,
root and all in all, I should know what God and man is.
~  Alfred Lord Tennyson “Flower in the Crannied Wall”

Each fuchsia flower a reminder
of the fear and fascination of
growing up female

Am I root, or am I bud?
Am I stem or am I leaf?
Am I dancing bloom or frail flower?
Am I fruit about to bear seed myself?

Am I still girl, or mother, or graying grandma?

All in all, throughout my life,
I hoped to be a mere reflection
of the Garden’s intended fertile glory;

Like a bulging fuchsia bud,
breaking open into full blossom,
withering on the stem to seed,
and being readied for the fall…

So much fear and fascination
found in fecundity-
to root and bud and bloom again.

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Dawn on our Darkness: Older Than Eternity, Now New

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When, in the cavern darkness, the child
first opened his mouth (even before
his eyes widened to see the supple world
his lungs had breathed into being),
could he have known that breathing
trumps seeing? Did he love the way air sighs
as it brushes in and out through flesh
to sustain the tiny heart’s iambic beating,
tramping the crossroads of the brain
like donkey tracks, the blood dazzling and
invisible, the corpuscles skittering to the earlobes
and toenails? Did he have any idea it
would take all his breath to speak in stories
that would change the world?
~Luci Shaw “Breath” from Accompanied By Angels: Poems of the Incarnation

Blue homespun and the bend of my breast
keep warm this small hot naked star
fallen to my arms. (Rest…
you who have had so far to come.)
Now nearness satisfies
the body of God sweetly. Quiet he lies
whose vigor hurled a universe. He sleeps
whose eyelids have not closed before.
His breath (so light it seems
no breath at all) once ruffled the dark deeps
to sprout a world. Charmed by doves’ voices,
the whisper of straw, he dreams,
hearing no music from his other spheres.
Breath, mouth, ears, eyes
he is curtailed who overflowed all skies,
all years. Older than eternity, now he
is new. Now native to earth as I am, nailed
to my poor planet, caught
that I might be free, blind in my womb
to know my darkness ended,
brought to this birth for me to be new-born,
and for him to see me mended
I must see him torn.
~Luci Shaw “Mary’s Song” from Accompanied By Angels: Poems of the Incarnation

This is the irrational season
When love blooms bright and wild.
Had Mary been filled with reason
There’d have been no room for the child.
~Madeleine L’Engle “After Annunciation” from A Cry Like A Bell

He who has come to men
dwells where we cannot tell
nor sight reveal him,
until the hour has struck
when the small heart does break
with hunger for him;

those who do merit least,
those whom no tongue does praise
the first to know him,
and on the face of the earth
the poorest village street
blossoming for him.
~Jane Tyson Clement from Watch for the Light

There are days we live
as if death were nowhere
in the background; from joy
to joy to joy, from wing to wing,
from blossom to blossom to
impossible blossom, to sweet impossible blossom.
~Li-Young Lee, from “From Blossoms” from Rose.

To think that the original Breath stirring the dust into man led to this moment?

This mystery of God becoming human, growing within woman, feeding from her breast, being wounded and bleeding to save the one who delivered him, emptying himself completely to deliver all of us as newborns, sliding slippery into our new life, a new existence, a transformed heaven and earth.

So we gasp for breath, our nostrils no longer breathing dust, but filled with the fragrance of forgiveness and grace.

Through His sacrifice, we too impossibly blossom, bursting forth into bloom.

This year’s Advent theme “Dawn on our Darkness” is taken from this 19th century Christmas hymn:

Brightest and best of the sons of the morning,
dawn on our darkness and lend us your aid.
Star of the east, the horizon adorning,
guide where our infant Redeemer is laid.
~Reginald Heber -from “Brightest and Best”

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Vines Running Wild

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Poetry is a rich, full-bodied whistle,
cracked ice crunching in pails,
the night that numbs the leaf,
the duel of two nightingales,
the sweet pea that has run wild,
Creation’s tears in shoulder blades.
~Boris Pasternak

Here are sweet-peas, on tip-toe for a flight:
With wings of gentle flush o’er delicate white,
And taper fingers catching at all things,
To bind them all about with tiny rings.
~John Keats from I Stood Tip-toe Upon a Little Hill

Sweet peas and pumpkins are strange neighbors on the table
Usually separated by weather and season,
one from late spring,
the other from mid-autumn,
truly never meant to meet.

Yet here they are, side by side,
grown in the same soil
through the same weeks,
their curling vines entwined.

A few dropped sweet pea seeds
forgotten in the summer weeds;
eventually swelled and thrived,
now forming rich autumn blooms
gracing a harvest table
with bright pastels and spring time fragrance.

Perhaps I too may bloom where I land,
even if ill-timed and out of place,
I might run wild, interwoven, bound to others
who look nothing like me,
encouraged to climb higher,
to blossom bravely,
even in the face of knowing
the killing frost is soon to come.

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Though the Flower Fades Away…

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O! my heart now feels so cheerful as I go with footsteps light
      In the daily toil of my dear home; 
And I’ll tell to you the secret that now makes my life so bright—
      There’s a flower at my window in full bloom. 

It is radiant in the sunshine, and so cheerful after rain; 
        And it wafts upon the air its sweet perfume. 
It is very, very lovely! May its beauties never wane—
        This dear flower at my window in full bloom. 

Nature has so clothed it in such glorious array, 
      And it does so cheer our home, and hearts illume; 
Its dear mem’ry I will cherish though the flower fade away—
      This dear flower at my window in full bloom. 

Oft I gaze upon this flower with its blossoms pure and white. 
        And I think as I behold its gay costume, 
While through life we all are passing may our lives be always bright 
        Like this flower at my window in full bloom.
~Lucian Watkins “The Flower at My Window” 1909

Details of the life of poet Lucian Watkins are few: a black man born in 1878 in Virginia, educated as a teacher and served as a U.S. Army Sergeant in WWI, then died shortly after in 1920. He leaves behind only a handful of poems, including the one above.

There is very little information available about Lucian but three letters written by him show a young man who earnestly wanted to have both a writing career and a “bread-winning vocation.” He describes feeling compelled to compose poetry, no matter what else he accomplishes.

The obvious challenges he faced –
–as a black man looking for a suitable place to live in Illinois so he can attend a college where there are no other people of color nearby,
–as a veteran of a most horrific war,
–as a creative mind trying to find a way to make a living,
he writes passionately about the aspirational purity of a white flower outside his window. Its bright radiance represents what he longs for in his own life.

From his letter to President Bissell of Bissell Colleges in Effingham, Illinois in 1919 after President Bissell is unable to assist in finding him a place to live, having suggested that the war veteran might consider “doing light housekeeping” – essentially live as a servant in a white household:

“About this matter of a boarding place. While I had hoped to obtain board with a member of my own race in Effingham, I had not thought it imperative that I should do so. I feel sure that there is enough Christianity in Effingham to provide that a brother-stranger in their midst shall not die of hunger. What would Jesus do?

It seems that some places in the south they rise more readily to our American ideal of democracy than in the North and Middle-West. ‘The Richmond Planet’ of Richmond, Va., states that ‘right here in Richmond, the capital of the late Confederacy, colored soldiers are welcomed to aristocratic Westhampton, and with no sigh of racial discrimination or antipathy to their being there.’ What is the matter with Illinois?

I am not sure as to what your question involves. We shall talk it over when I arrive. There must be a way that is just and that will be good for all concerned. Very respectfully, signed Lucian B. Watkins“

This man was not only a poet. He was a statesman.

Though Lucian Watkins’ life was cut short for reasons unknown, and his portfolio of poetry is small, he is nonetheless a gift to generations of future poets and readers. This black artist did not let the inevitable rainfall in his life discourage his world view; he himself is radiant with illumination, showing a budding cheerfulness. His work reminds us something as simple as observing a resilient flower outside our window can help heal painful hurts and fulfill our deepest longing.

In his writing, Lucian Watkins draws a thin line between joy and sorrow, embracing the joy in a simple white flower in full bloom before it, as will we all, fades away.

Flower gleam and glow
let your power shine
make the Clock reverse
bring back what once was mine
What once was mine
Heal what has been hurt
change the fate’s design
Save what has been lost
bring back what once was mine
what once was mine
~Healing Song from Tangled

No matter if you’re born
To play the king or pawn
For the line is thinly drawn ‘tween joy and sorrow
So my fantasy becomes reality
And I must be what I must be and face tomorrow
So I’ll continue to continue to pretend
My life will never end
And flowers never bend with the rainfall
~Paul Simon
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Secret Purple Wisdom

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There’s always an iris
amusing and amazing.
Today, wildly purple stretching
to search dark colors,
open and about to reach.
Reach.

Even the vase holds on,
shows courage for both
who touch the beautiful,
alive and color to color,
evoking how one can love another.
Longer to live, shorter to die.
~Eloise Klein Healy “Iris”

What word informs the world,
and moves the worm along in his blind tunnel?

What secret purple wisdom tells the iris edges
to unfold in frills? What juiced and emerald thrill

urges the sap until the bud resolves
its tight riddle? What irresistible command

unfurls this cloud above this greening hill,
or one more wave — its spreading foam and foil —

across the flats of sand? What minor thrust
of energy issues up from humus in a froth

of ferns? Delicate as a laser, it filigrees
the snow, the stars. Listen close — What silver sound

thaws winter into spring? Speaks clamor into singing?
Gives love for loneliness? It is this

un-terrestrial pulse, deep as heaven, that folds you
in its tingling embrace, gongs in your echo heart.
~Luci Shaw “What Secret Purple Wisdom”  The Green Earth: Poems of Creation 

He gave Himself to us
to wrest joy from our misery-

A mystery is too much to accept
such sacrifice is possible.

We are blind-hearted to the possibility:
He who cannot be measured unfolds before us
to reach us, overwhelming our darkness. 

I prefer remaining closed in my bud,
hidden in the little room of my heart
rather than risk opening by loving another
in full blossom and fruitfulness.

Lord, give me grace to open my tight fist of a bud.

Prepare me for embracing your mystery. 
Prepare me to unfurl,
to reach out beyond myself.
Prepare me to bloom wildly purple.

What is the crying at Jordan?
Who hears, O God, the prophecy?
Dark is the season, dark
our hearts and shut to mystery.

Who then shall stir in this darkness
prepare for joy in the winter night?
Mortal in darkness we
lie down, blind-hearted, seeing no light.

Lord, give us grace to awake us,
to see the branch that begins to bloom;
in great humility
is hid all heaven in a little room.

Now comes the day of salvation,
in joy and terror the Word is born!
God gives himself into our lives;
Oh, let salvation dawn!
~Carol Christopher Drake

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A Thought as Small as Vetch

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Before the ordinary realities, ordinary failures:
hunger, coldness, anger, longing, heat.
Yet one day, a thought as small as a vetch flower opens.
~Jane Hirschfield from “Flowering Vetch”

Who would have thought it possible that a tiny little flower could preoccupy a person so completely that there simply wasn’t room for any other thought?
~ Sophie Scholl 

Little flower,
but if I could understand what you are,
root and all in all,
I should know what God and man is.
~  Alfred Lord Tennyson from “Flower in the Crannied Wall”

If seeds in the black earth can turn into such beautiful roses, what might not the heart of man become in its long journey toward the stars?
—G.K. Chesterton

Am I root, or am I bud?
Am I stem or am I leaf?
All in all, I am but
the merest image and tiniest thought
of God’s fruiting glory destined for the heavens.

I am His tears shed when seed is strewn
as He is broken apart and scattered,
spreading the Word to yearning hearts everywhere.

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