Some mornings all I do is write down words—cistern, tribal, cached—copying them from sprawled pages of books across my desk, words that call out— glimmerings, cursive, saffron, heartwood—holding me in place as if to say listen, you may need me someday, I might offer you another way toward beauty, or even beyond. ~Andrea Potos “Daily Practices” from The Presence of One Word
I want to make poems that look into the earth and the heavens and see the unseeable. I want them to honor both the heart of faith, and the light of the world; the gladness that says, without any words, everything. ~Mary Oliver from “Everything”from New and Selected Poems: Volume Two
This morning
poem hopes
that even though its lines are broken
its reader
will be drawn forward to the part where blueberries firm against fingers
In the ghostly dawn I write new words for your ears— Even now you sleep. ~Amy Lowell“V” from Twenty-Four Hokku
The blueberry fields are all afire, each leaf an October mosaic.
As chlorophyll wanes, the colors appear by magic, like words selected for a poem which begins as an empty slate.
Each carefully chosen.
Each surrounded by silence becoming more holy when it’s no longer empty.
So much of the beauty of poetry is the silence, a pause between the words.
Like life, there is nothing empty or meaningless about pausing.
Like poet Mary Oliver:
I want to make poems that look into the earth and the heavens and see the unseeable.
I am so awed at your faithful reading and generous sharing of what I offer here.
Even when my lines are broken, or I say again what another has already said much better, yet bears repeating — I too try to write with quiet hands, and see through quiet eyes, out of reverence and awe for what unseeable gifts God has given us.
Thank you for being here with me.
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Think of this – that the writer wrote alone, and the reader read alone, and they were alone with each other. ~A.S. Byatt from Possession
If librarians were honest, they would say, No one spends time here without being changed. Maybe you should go home. While you still can. ~Joseph Mills from “If Librarians Were Honest”
Why 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? ~Annie Dillard from “Write Till You Drop”
…for people who love books and need To touch them, open them, browse for a while, And find some common good––that’s why we read. Readers and writers are two sides of the same gold coin. You write and I read and in that moment I find A union more perfect than any club I could join: The simple intimacy of being one mind. Here in a book-filled sun-lit room below the street, Strangers––some living, some dead––are hoping to meet. ~Garrison Keillor
The mere brute pleasure of reading–the sort of pleasure a cow has in grazing. ~G.K. Chesterton
Each day as I decide what to share here, I think of each of you who might open my email, or click on a link to see what I have to say.
We are alone together, you and I, for only a few minutes. I consider that precious time you are entrusting to me and want to make it worthwhile.
When you read this, you may be eating breakfast, or in the middle of your workday at the computer, or on your phone during a commute, or sitting in a waiting room wondering when your name will be called.
Or maybe you are sitting in the bathroom, or past ready to fall asleep in bed.
I am honored and humbled to hear from you after our alone time together each day.
I too spend reading time alone every day, grateful for what writers write while alone. I don’t tell them often enough how they change my day for the better.
Some are long gone from this world, so I’ll never have the chance.
Like infinite blades of grass in a pasture, I find far too many words to read — so much to consume, so little time. I nibble away, blade by blade, page by page, word by word, but the greatest pleasure of all is to settle down into a good long cud-chewing session, redigesting and mulling over what all I’ve taken in.
It is brute pleasure to take in words that grow roots so deep they never go away, words that sustain and make me grow and keep me alive. Words to illuminate from without and within.
Since childhood, I’ve imagined the books on my shelf having an internal life of their own, filled as they are with words and characters and plots and devices, contained in darkness between two covers until someone opens and reads.
Those words are freed, exposed to the light of day, to leak through the bindings or trickle down the pages to find new destinations. The stories morph, journeying on to who knows where.
Perhaps they drift to the ever-changing clouds that illuminate or darken the skies, depending upon their impact: some words of joy and some words of lament and sorrow.
Perhaps like closed books whose words are set free, when I pray, my words are liberated into the changing light to reach the ear of God.
And it is there my story is told, and He listens carefully to each word.
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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
The fields are snowbound no longer; There are little blue lakes and flags of tenderest green. The snow has been caught up into the sky— So many white clouds—and the blue of the sky is cold. Now the sun walks in the forest, He touches the boughs and stems with his golden fingers; They shiver, and wake from slumber. Over the barren branches he shakes his yellow curls. … Yet is the forest full of the sound of tears…. A wind dances over the fields. Shrill and clear the sound of her waking laughter, Yet the little blue lakes tremble And the flags of tenderest green bend and quiver. ~Katherine Mansfield “Very Early Spring”
You might say that clouds have no nationality Being flags of no country, flaunting their innocent neutrality Across frontiers, ignorant of boundaries; But these clouds are clearly foreign, such an exotic clutter Against the blue cloth of the sky I want to rummage among them, I want to turn them over With eager fingers, I want to bargain For this one or that one, I want to haggle and dicker Over the prices, and I want to see my clouds wrapped up In sheets of old newspapers, and give them away To young girls to pin in their hair Or tuck them, glossy as gardenias, behind an ear, Or stretch one out to the length of a lacy shawl And toss it over a shoulder, or around a waist. ~Constance Urdang “Clouds”
Our farm sits about 9 miles from an international border. The sky and clouds are oblivious to the line drawn by two governments, and don’t bother to stop at the border stations controlling access of humans across that line.
The clouds are free to go where they please, so they do, while we watch. They are both a foreign and domestic cloud of witnesses to our earthbound follies and foolishness.
No passports or IDs, no being pulled into “secondary” for more intensive searches and questioning, no being “turned back” not allowed across, no deportations.
They simply float and glide where the breezes take them, assuming whatever shape, identity or characteristics they wish.
What a beautiful day in the neighborhood if one happens to be a cloud or a cloud of witnesses…
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Light changes slowly with subtle words such as cautious and determined, marking a demarcation line across the horizon, delineating between day and night taking over the sky. Drakes in the wetlands are excited by the transformation.
In daylight, the moon is a white wafer. Perception only amazes the participant who never notices the daily occurrences with minor variations.
What difference are the blending shades, clouds wheeling like hawks, the way light haunches on the edge while day begins or ends. There is always this anticipation of the differences, and the end results are that our expectations are met—
not in color or uncertain times for the transfers but in the way no two days begin or end the same. For thousands of years, the universe has palpitated, expanded, and contracted like a heart with such restlessness we barely notice what is plain to the eye: the universe is constant and changeable. We barely break the surface of observation, and when we do, we take for granted the drakes will migrate when marshes are ice-tinged, and the drakes will return when spring returns, never considering it might be otherwise. ~Martin Willitts Jr., “Transformation” from Leave Nothing Behind
I got out of bed on two strong legs. It might have been otherwise. I ate cereal, sweet milk, ripe, flawless peach. It might have been otherwise. I took the dog uphill to the birch wood. All morning I did the work I love. At noon I lay down with my mate. It might have been otherwise. We ate dinner together at a table with silver candlesticks. It might have been otherwise. I slept in a bed in a room with paintings on the walls, and planned another day just like this day. But one day, I know, it will be otherwise. ~Jane Kenyon “Otherwise”
No two days begin or end the same way. It is my privilege to watch and take note.
I spent much of seven decades barely noticing, absorbed in all but what transpired right beneath my feet and over my head.
Now I take the time and effort to appreciate each day’s uniqueness and share what I see and hear and feel.
Yes, palpitations in the world and within me catch my breath. There is expansion and contraction and some moments of skipped beats.
The point is that the beat goes on.
I’ll never take transformation for granted again. I welcome it, even as it focuses and fascinates and frightens me. I am well aware, now ever aware, it always could be otherwise.
This year’s Lenten theme:
…where you go I will go… Ruth 1:16
English translation:
Hear, smith of the heavens, what the poet asks. May softly come unto me thy mercy. So I call on thee, for thou hast created me. I am thy slave, thou art my Lord.
God, I call on thee to heal me. Remember me, mild one, most we need thee. Drive out, O king of suns, generous and great, human every sorrow from the city of the heart.
Watch over me, mild one, most we need thee, truly every moment in the world of men. Send us, son of the virgin, good causes, all aid is from thee, in my heart.
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There is not one blade of grass, there is no color in this world that is not intended to make us rejoice. ~John Calvinas quoted in John Calvin: A Sixteenth Century Portrait (Oxford, 1988)byWilliam J. Bouwsma
It is too easy to become blinded to the glory surrounding us if we allow it to seem routine and commonplace.
I can’t remember the last time I celebrated a blade of grass, given how focused I am in mowing it into conformity and submission.
During the summer months, I’m seldom up early enough to witness the pink sunrise. In the winter, I’m too busy making dinner to take time to watch the sun paint the sky red as it sets.
I miss opportunities to stop and notice what surrounds me innumerable times a day. It takes only a moment of recognition and appreciation to feel the joy, and for that moment time stands still. So life stretches a little longer when I stop to acknowledge the intention of creation as an endless reservoir of rejoicing.
If a blade of grass, if a palette of color, if all this is made for joy, then perhaps, so am I. Even colorless, commonplace, sometimes stormy me. Indeed, so am I.
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Now’s a good time, before the night comes on, To praise the loyalty of the vase of flowers Gracing the parlor table, and the bowl of oranges, And the book with freckled pages resting on the tablecloth. To remark how these items aren’t conspiring To pack their bags and move to a place Where stillness appears to more advantage. No plan for a heaven above, beyond, or within, Whose ever-blooming bushes are rustling In a sea breeze at this very moment. These things are focusing all their attention On holding fast as time washes around them. The flowers in the vase won’t come again. The page of the book beside it, the edge turned down, Will never be read again for the first time. The light from the window’s angled. The sun’s moving on. That’s why the people Who live in the house are missing. They’re all outside enjoying the light that’s left them. Lucky for them to find when they return These silent things just as they were. Night’s coming on and they haven’t been frightened off. They haven’t once dreamed of going anywhere. ~Carl Dennis, “Still Life” from Ranking the Wishes
Wendell Berry – Another Day Sabbath Poems
The transformation of objects in space, or objects in time, To objects outside either, but tactile, still precise… It’s always the same problem – Nothing’s more abstract, more unreal, than what we actually see. The job is to make it otherwise. ~Charles Wright from “Basic Dialogue”in Appalachia
Annie Dillard – Pilgrim at Tinker Creek
Let us treasure the Light that is left to us, to dwell outside in its midst as night is coming.
Meanwhile, a still life exists within, unchanging, real, tangible, not going anywhere.
Stillness is always there if we decide to come in as the dark descends.
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Just looking at them I grow greedy, as if they were freshly baked loaves waiting on their shelves to be broken open—that one and that—and I make my choice in a mood of exalted luck, browsing among them like a cow in sweetest pasture.
For life is continuous as long as they wait to be read—these inked paths opening into the future, page after page, every book its own receding horizon. And I hold them, one in each hand, a curious ballast weighting me here to the earth. ~Linda Pastan “The Bookstall” from Carnival Evening
…for people who love books and need To touch them, open them, browse for a while, And find some common good––that’s why we read. Readers and writers are two sides of the same gold coin. You write and I read and in that moment I find A union more perfect than any club I could join: The simple intimacy of being one mind. Here in a book-filled sun-lit room below the street, Strangers––some living, some dead––are hoping to meet. ~Garrison Keillor
You know who you are.
You are the person who stockpiles stacks of books on the bedside table and next to your favorite chair.
The person who sacrifices sleep to read just one more page.
The person who reads the cereal box when nothing else is available near the breakfast table.
The girl who falls into an uncovered manhole walking down a busy street while reading.
The objects of your affection may be as precious as the Book of Kells.
or as sappy as an Archie and Jughead comic book.
It’s the words, the words, that keep zipping by, telegraphing
an urgent message:What’s next? What’s next? ~Lois Edstrom “Bookworm” from Almanac of Quiet Days
Most of my life has been a reading rather than a writing life. For too many decades, I spent most of my time reading scientific and medical journals, to keep up with the changing knowledge in my profession. Even as a retired physician, I try to spend an hour a day reading medical articles but now have the time to dabble in books of memoir, biography, poetry and the occasional novel.
As a reader, I am no longer a stranger to the author or poet whose words I read. In a few instances, I’ve had the honor and privilege to meet my favorite authors in real life and to interact with them on line. Some are friends on the page as well as in my life.
I am no longer a stranger to many of you who read my words here on Barnstorming every day – I have been able to meet a number of you over the years. There is no greater privilege than to share our stories with one another.
No matter where I discover books – in an independent bookstore, in a little free library standing along the roadside, or inside the world’s treasured libraries filled with books of antiquity – I seek out the privileged sanctuary of turning page after page written by those who graciously give me a glimpse of their inner world.
If librarians were honest, they would say, No one spends time here without being changed. Maybe you should go home. While you still can. ~Joseph Mills from “If Librarians Were Honest”
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Writer Luci Shaw turned 95 yesterday. A life-long poet and essayist in addition to being a wife, mother, publisher, gardener and outdoor enthusiast, Luci is a child of God who is continually living out and articulating the questions of faith, grace, and belief.
It is my privilege to know her as a neighbor in nearby Bellingham. Her books grace my shelves and I cherish her personal words of encouragement and mentoring.
Luci has gifted the world for decades with beauty and honesty, composing enriching poetic observations with heavenly anticipation.
Below is only a small sample of her work, some published as recently as two weeks ago – more of her writing and many books can be found at www.lucishaw.com.
Happy Birthday, Luci! You are beloved and blessed!
Luci Shaw -virtual presentation for Calvin Festival of Faith and Writing 2022
Last night I lay awake and practiced getting old. Not difficult,
but I needed to teach myself to love my destination before I arrive.
I feel the earth shifting under me. My writing hand shakes—its rubbery nudges clumsy,
my mind going slack, the way a day will lose its light and give itself to darkness,
and that long, nocturnal pause of inquiry— What next? And how long before light
reopens her blue eye? And will I need to learn a new language to converse with my Creator?
So, I am a questioner, one who waits, still, to arrive somewhere, some bright nest where
a new language breeds that I can learn to speak, unhindered, into heaven’s air,
somewhere I can live a long time, and never have to look back. ~Luci Shaw “December the 95th Year”
Luci Shaw at a Bellingham reading at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church -2017
In time of drought, let us be thankful for this very gentle rain, a gift not to be disdained though it is little and brief, reaching no great depth, barely kissing the leaves’ lips. Think of it as mercy. Other minor blessings may show up—tweezers for splinters, change for the parking meter, a green light at the intersection, a cool wind that lifts away summer’s suffocating heat. An apology after a harsh comment. A word that opens an unfinished poem like a key in a lock. ~Luci Shaw “Signs” from Eye of the Beholder.
Luci at a Bellingham reading of her poetry at Village Books in 2016
These still December mornings… Outside everything’s tinted rose, grape, turquoise, silver–the stones by the path, the skin of the sun
on the pond ice, at the night the aureola of a pregnant moon, like me, iridescent, almost full term with light. ~Luci Shaw from “Advent Visitation“in Accompanied by Angels
Today, in Bellingham, even the sidewalks gleam. Small change glints from the creases in the lady’s mantle and the hostas after the rain that falls, like grace, unmerited. My pockets are full, spilling over. ~Luci Shaw from “Small Change”
I love driving in Bellingham in the spring. In spite of the chilly weather, all the fruit trees are ‘springing,’ singing themselves into being in magnificent displays of pink and white–apricot, plum, apple, peach, cherry–undiscouraged by the darkly looming clouds today. Soon each twig will display its bridal bouquet grown for this spring wedding. I know this from years of observation! Next, they’ll grow so full and heavy with blossoms they’ll be ready to throw their bouquets to the crowd, and I’ll be watching for the petals to drop like wedding confetti, filling the gutters and swirling over sidewalks with their largesse. ~Luci Shaw
Out of the shame of spittle, the scratch of dirt, he made an anointing.
Oh, it was an agony-the gravel in the eye, the rude slime, the brittle clay caked on the lid.
But with the hurt light came leaping; in the shock and shine, abstracts took flesh and flew;
winged words like view and space, shape and shade and green and sky, bird and horizon and sun,
What next, she wonders, with the angel disappearing, and her room suddenly gone dark.
The loneliness of her news possesses her. She ponders how to tell her mother.
Still, the secret at her heart burns like a sun rising. How to hold it in— that which cannot be contained.
She nestles into herself, half-convinced it was some kind of good dream, she its visionary.
But then, part dazzled, part prescient— she hugs her body, a pod with a seed that will split her. ~Luci Shaw “Mary Considers Her Situation”
because we are all betrayers, taking silver and eating body and blood and asking (guilty) is it I and hearing him say yes it would be simple for us all to rush out and hang ourselves but if we find grace to weep and wait after the voice of morning has crowed in our ears clearly enough to break our hearts he will be there to ask us each again do you love me ~Luci Shaw “Judas, Peter” from Polishing the Petoskey Stone
Down he came from up, and in from out, and here from there. A long leap, an incandescent fall from magnificent to naked, frail, small, through space, between stars, into our chill night air, shrunk, in infant grace, to our damp, cramped earthy place among all the shivering sheep.
And now, after all, there he lies, fast asleep. ~Luci Shaw “Descent” from Accompanied By Angels
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 slight 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”
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