Tag: cherry tree

Blooming into Glass

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All the love you will ever feel
you have always carried within you

The pellet you think love is

blooms into stone,
into flame, into glass

The tree knows
how to feed every part of itself

When you tap the tree
to drink it
it speaks to you

There is sweetness in you
All the self can do
is melt
~Hannah Stephenson from “Sap Season”

It never mattered that there was once a vast grieving:

trees on their hillsides, in their groves, weeping—
a plastic gold dropping

through seasons and centuries to the ground—
until now.

The clear air we need to find each other in is
gone forever, yet

this resin once
collected seeds, leaves and even small feathers as it fell
and fell

which now in a sunny atmosphere seem as alive as
they ever were

as though the past could be present and memory itself
a Baltic honey—

a chafing at the edges of the seen, a showing off of just how much
can be kept safe

inside a flawed translucence.
~Eavan Boland, from “Amber” in The Wake Forest Book of Irish Women’s Poetry (2011)

The last remaining cherry tree on our farm,
a Royal Anne,
has stood between house and barn for over 100 years.
This year, its branch joints and bark defects are bleeding – oozing sculptures of amber sap.

The resin is hard and glass-like,
reflecting the tree’s slow internal circulation,
changing subtly day by day.

Though its cherries burst months ago
with juicy flavor,
now it bleeds crystalline flames from its wounds.

What a gift is this love bleeding out
as it moves deep inside an old trunk.
In its thirsty anguish, our dear cherry tree is weeping,
creating glass fruit reflecting Light.

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Holding a Memory of Cherries

barnstormingblog1 Comment

We used to pick cherries over the hill
where we paid to climb wooden ladders
into the bright haven above our heads, the fruit
dangling earthward. Dark, twinned bells
ringing in some good fortune just beyond
our sight. I have lived on earth long enough
to know good luck arrives only on its way
to someone else, for it must leave you to the miracle
of your own misfortune, lest you grow weary
of harvest, of cherries falling from the crown of sky
in mid-summer, of hours of idle. Let there be
a stone of suffering. Let the fruit taste of sweetness
and dust. Let grief split your heart so precisely
you must hold, somehow, a memory of cherries—
tart talismans of pleasure—in the rucksack
of your soul. Taut skin, sharp blessing.

Luminous, ordinary and acute.
~Danusha Laméris “U-Pick Orchards”

Life is not a bowl of cherries,
unless you count the ones
that aren’t yet ripe, or are over-ripe,
or have a squirrel- or bird-bite taken,
or have shriveled to raisins on the tree.

Yes, there are perfect cherries
that shine in the dark, glistening with promise,
tempting us to climb high to pick them.

Those we really want usually are out of reach.

How can we know what perfection is
unless we experience where life falls short?

The lingering taste of grief,
the agony of waiting for word in a tragedy,
the gnawing emptiness of indescribable loss.

Only the memory of what was nearly perfect,
remembering what could have been
knowing what will someday be our reality
can ease the bitter pit of suffering now.

May the families of those swept away in flooding,
those who live in the path of war and violence,
those who hunger for justice, or starving for food,
those who struggle with life-threatening and chronic illness
somehow know the comfort of God’s perfection awaits them.
The Light and Goodness is there for us to taste,
yet just beyond our reach.

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We Are No Longer Alone: Bowing Down

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When Joseph woke from sleep, he did as the angel of the Lord commanded him…
~Matthew 1:24

Who has not considered Mary
And who her praise would dim,
But what of humble Joseph
Is there no song for him?

If Joseph had not driven
Straight nails through honest wood
If Joseph had not cherished
His Mary as he should;

If Joseph had not proved him
A sire both kind and wise
Would he have drawn with favor
The Child’s all-probing eyes?

Would Christ have prayed, ‘Our Father’
Or cried that name in death
Unless he first had honored
Joseph of Nazareth ?
~Luci Shaw “Joseph The Carpenter”

It was from Joseph first I learned
of love. Like me he was dismayed.
How easily he could have turned
me from his house; but, unafraid,
he put me not away from him
(O God-sent angel, pray for him).
Thus through his love was Love obeyed.

The Child’s first cry came like a bell:
God’s Word aloud, God’s Word in deed.
The angel spoke: so it befell,
and Joseph with me in my need.
O Child whose father came from heaven,
to you another gift was given,
your earthly father chosen well.

With Joseph I was always warmed
and cherished. Even in the stable
I knew that I would not be harmed.
And, though above the angels swarmed,
man’s love it was that made me able
to bear God’s love, wild, formidable,
to bear God’s will, through me performed.
~Madeleine L’Engle “O Sapientia” in A Widening Light: Poems of the Incarnation edited by Luci Shaw

The hero of the story this season is the man in the background.

He is the adoptive father
who does the right thing rather than what he has legal right to do,
who listens to his dreams and believes,
who leads the way over dusty roads to be counted,
who searches valiantly for a suitable place to stay,
who does whatever he can to assist her labor,
who stands tall over a vulnerable mother and infant
while the poor and curious pour out of the hills,
the wise and foreign appear bringing gifts,
who takes his family to safety when the innocents are slaughtered.

He is only a carpenter, not born for heroics,
but steps up when called.
He is a humble man teaching his son a living,
until his son leaves to save the dying.
He is strong and obedient,
a tree bowing low to give up his fruit.

This man Joseph is the Chosen father,
the best Abba a God could hope for.

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This year’s Advent theme is from Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s sermon on the First Sunday in Advent, December 2, 1928:

The celebration of Advent is possible only to those who are troubled in soul, who know themselves to be poor and imperfect, and who look forward to something greater to come. For these, it is enough to wait in humble fear until the Holy One himself comes down to us, God in the child in the manager.

God comes.

He is, and always will be now, with us in our sin, in our suffering, and at our death. We are no longer alone. God is with us and we are no longer homeless.
~Dietrich Bonhoeffer – from Christmas Sermons

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Remember This

barnstormingblog1 Comment

Late in May as the light lengthens
toward summer the young goldfinches
flutter down through the day for the first time
to find themselves among fallen petals
cradling their day’s colors in the day’s shadows
of the garden beside the old house
after a cold spring with no rain
not a sound comes from the empty village
as I stand eating the black cherries
from the loaded branches above me
saying to myself Remember this
~W.S. Merwin “Black Cherries”

Let me imagine that we will come again
when we want to and it will be spring
we will be no older than we ever were
the worn griefs will have eased like the early cloud
through which the morning slowly comes to itself
and the ancient defenses against the dead
will be done with and left to the dead at last
the light will be as it is now in the garden
that we have made here these years together
of our long evenings and astonishment
~W.S. Merwin “To Paula in Late Spring”

Yes, let us be astonished that any spring happens.
That the dull gray of winter yields to petals and fruitful blossoms,
then to fruit that is both sweet and sour on our tongues.
That the air resonates with birdsong and flower perfume
and the sun warms enough to dissipate the mist and tears.

Let us remember this, oh let us remember
so it is never forgotten:
all is made right and good
as eternity itself will taste like this.

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Melting Love into Glass

barnstormingblog2 Comments

All the love you will ever feel
you have always carried within you

The pellet you think love is

blooms into stone,
into flame, into glass

The tree knows
how to feed every part of itself

When you tap the tree
to drink it
it speaks to you

There is sweetness in you
All the self can do
is melt
~Hannah Stephenson from “Sap Season”

The last remaining cherry tree on this farm, a Royal Anne, has stood between house and barn for over ninety years, bearing heavily some years, and other years, like this one, yielding only a handful of fruit. Last year was a bumper crop followed by a hot dry summer and a bitter cold winter. The old tree was overly stressed, its branch joints and bark defects oozing miniature sculptures of resin in response.

These secretions feel hard and seem glass-like, yet reflecting this tree’s slow internal circulation, they change subtly day by day. This amber becomes this tree’s aging and suffering made manifest. Though its cherries burst with juicy flavor, it bleeds crystalline flame from its wounds.

What a gift is this leaking love, moving deep inside an old trunk. In its thirsty anguish, our dear cherry tree is weeping to reflect the sun.

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Into the Light Again

barnstormingblog1 Comment

Out of the nursery and into the garden
where it rooted and survived its first hard winter,
then a few years of freedom while it blossomed,
put out its first tentative branches, withstood
the insects and the poisons for insects,
developed strange ideas about its height
and suffered the pruning of its quirks and clutters,
its self-indulgent thrusts
and the infighting of stems at cross purposes
year after year.  Each April it forgot
why it couldn’t do what it had to do,
and always after blossoms, fruit, and leaf-fall,
was shown once more what simply couldn’t happen.

Its oldest branches now, the survivors carved
by knife blades, rain, and wind, are sending shoots
straight up, blood red, into the light again.
~David Wagoner “The Cherry Tree”

A stone’s throw from an abandoned homestead foundation leans
an ancient cherry tree, bent by countless storms and prunings,
its northern half now bare,
yet from the southern half
dangles clusters of sweet century old promises.

Once orchard lifeblood of this farm,
its fruit picked for farmers’ market
an early dawn hour’s wagon ride to town;
now broken down, forgotten
until this week of fruitful surrender.

Already, but not yet finished,
roots still reaching deep for one more season;
a faithful cycle blooming forth
with budding life from gnarled knots
to soon yield glorious from weary dying branches.

Hundreds of glistening amber globes of rosy sheen
cling clustered on crooked lichened limbs,
to be gathered heaping into bowls of gold,
awaiting ecstatic burst of savored perfection,
fulfilling an old promise of sweet abandon.

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The Beginning Shall Remind Us of the End: The Tree Bowed Down

barnstormingblog1 Comment

Who has not considered Mary
And who her praise would dim,
But what of humble Joseph
Is there no song for him?

If Joseph had not driven
Straight nails through honest wood
If Joseph had not cherished
His Mary as he should;

If Joseph had not proved him
A sire both kind and wise
Would he have drawn with favor
The Child’s all-probing eyes?

Would Christ have prayed, ‘Our Father’
Or cried that name in death
Unless he first had honored
Joseph of Nazareth ?
~Luci Shaw “Joseph The Carpenter”

It was from Joseph first I learned
of love. Like me he was dismayed.
How easily he could have turned
me from his house; but, unafraid,
he put me not away from him
(O God-sent angel, pray for him).
Thus through his love was Love obeyed.

The Child’s first cry came like a bell:
God’s Word aloud, God’s Word in deed.
The angel spoke: so it befell,
and Joseph with me in my need.
O Child whose father came from heaven,
to you another gift was given,
your earthly father chosen well.

With Joseph I was always warmed
and cherished. Even in the stable
I knew that I would not be harmed.
And, though above the angels swarmed,
man’s love it was that made me able
to bear God’s love, wild, formidable,
to bear God’s will, through me performed.
~Madeleine L’Engle O Sapientia in A Widening Light: Poems of the Incarnation edited by Luci Shaw

The hero of the story this season is the man in the background.

He is the adoptive father
who does the right thing rather than what he has legal right to do,
who listens to his dreams and believes,
who leads the way over dusty roads to be counted,
who searches valiantly for a suitable place to stay,
who does whatever he can to assist her labor,
who stands tall over a vulnerable mother and infant
while the poor and curious pour out of the hills,
the wise and foreign appear bringing gifts,
who takes his family to safety when the innocents are slaughtered.

He is only a carpenter, not born for heroics,
but steps up when called.
He is a humble man teaching his son a living,
until his son leaves to save the dying.
He is strong and obedient,
a tree bowing low to give up his fruit.

This man Joseph is the Chosen father,
the best Abba a God could hope for.

When Joseph was an old man, an old man was he
He courted Virgin Mary, the Queen of Galilee

Joseph and Mary were walking one day
Here is apples and cherries so fair to behold

Mary said to Joseph, so meek and so mild:
Joseph, gather me some cherries, for I am with child

Then Joseph flew in anger, in anger he flew
Let the father of the baby gather cherries for you!

Well, the cherry-tree bowed low down, bowed down to the ground,
And Mary gathered cherries while Joseph stood down.

Then Joseph took Mary all on his right knee,
Crying, “Lord, have mercy for what I have done.”

When Joseph was an old man, an old man was he,
He courted Virgin Mary, the Queen of Galilee.

Don’t be afraid
To take Mary as your wife
For the child in her
Is of the Spirit
Don’t be afraid
To take Mary as your wife
For the child in her
Is of the Spirit
Don’t be afraid

[Chorus]
She will bear a son
And you shall call this one “Jesus”
She will bear a son
And you shall call this one “Jesus”

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In Search of a Cage

barnstormingblog6 Comments

cherrybounty

 

cherryjubilee

 

dovelight

 

It took only a moment to decide.

As happens every day, as she sang to me, her arm reached past my perch through the open cage door, to pour fresh water in my bowl.   Just beyond her, overhead near the barn, were clusters of glistening red cherries bouncing in invitation in the morning breeze.

So I heeded, flapping clumsily over her arm as she spilled the water, her mouth an “O”.

I escaped my cage, my first time flying more than a few feet, awkward and careening.  I made it to a high branch and grabbed hold tightly, staring down at her asking me to come back.   Instead I listened to the cherries next to me, their sweet song of red juice pouring over the sides of my beak.

Cherry jubilee.

I ate more than my fill of freedom.

When the breeze picked up in the darkening hours, I missed the comfort of my indoor loft nest lined with cedar shavings and horse hair, with snug walls where I have spent many wintry nights, and soft summer twilights.   My mournful evening anthem was hushed by the wing swoop overhead of a clicking owl, anxious for dinner. I listened to the chorus of coyotes nearby and tucked my head in fear, with no wire enclosure to protect me. I fell silent, barely sleeping.

At dawn, she found me picking at cat food in the dish near the back porch, with an ancient feline crouched a few feet away, tail twitching, ready for instant breakfast.  I fluttered off, returning to relative safety of the orchard treetops, alert for hawks.   For two days I explored the trees surrounding my little home, its door still open as a standing invitation.  She filled my water bowl and brought my seeds just as she always did, singing.  I listened carefully to the familiar tune, twisting my neck one way and then another to hear her better.

The cherry song no longer seemed as sweet.

The next morning, she found me in my little nest inside my dove house, the door still wide open.  She filled my bowl with fresh water and brought me new seeds, closed the door, latching it snug and safe.

The cherries still beckoned but not to me.

Today, joyful at dawn, I woke her with my mourning song.

 

cherries20183

 

mourning_dove_birds_eye_view

 

 

A Sweet Abandon

barnstormingblog5 Comments

cherrybounty

cherry615

royalanne2

 

A stone’s throw from an abandoned homestead foundation leans
an ancient cherry tree, bent by countless storms,
its northern half bare,
from the southern half
dangles clusters of sweet century old promises.

Once orchard lifeblood of this farm,
its fruit picked for farmers’ market
an early dawn hour’s wagon ride to town;
now broken down, forgotten
until this week of fruitful surrender.

Already, but not yet finished,
roots still reaching deep for one more season;
a faithful cycle blooming forth
with budding life from gnarled knots
to yield glorious from weary dying branches.

Hundreds of glistening amber globes of rosy sheen
cling clustered on crooked lichened limbs,
to be gathered up heaping into bowls of gold,
awaiting ecstatic burst of savored perfection,
fulfilling an old promise of sweet abandon.

 

cherries6615

royalanne

Making Scents

barnstormingblog5 Comments

fullbloom2

appleblossom316

appleblossom416

I admit it.  Right this minute, I should be doing our taxes.  We’re down to the last minute and I have all the paperwork stacked on the desk beside me, but I’m not doing it.  It is too miserable a task to even contemplate.  Instead I go outside to capture spring.

The last few mornings, when I have risen just before dawn, I have gone outside to breathe deeply of the scents that hang heavy in the cool moist air.  The perfume from thousands of orchard blossoms on our farm is heady and intoxicating.  There is nothing quite like these two weeks each year when our farm becomes a mass of snow white and pink scented flowers, busy with honey bees and eventually showering petals to the ground as the fruit starts to form.

Unfortunately, I’m allergic to tree pollen.  I breathe deeply and… sneeze and wheeze.  Even the best medicine can’t stop my reaction. So much loveliness causes so much misery.  So I retreat back to the house and look out the window and enjoy the view from afar, dabbing my dripping nose.

Ironically, this is the same time of year our dairy farm neighbors start to empty their manure lagoons and begin to spread their thousands of gallons of liquid manure on the surrounding fields, readying the ground for the hay or corn crop to come later on this summer. That scent hangs heavy in the cool moist air as well, pungent and unforgettable, penetrating even into our clothing so we carry the smell back into the house with us.  Of course I’m not allergic to manure.  After all, it’s only grass and water transformed.  In fact, as nasty a smell as it is, it’s invigorating in a perverse sort of way.  I know where it comes from, I know what its potential is, and I know the crop it yields.  It is, in itself, as treasured as the blossoms that yield fruit on our farm.

Taxes are the manure in our lives.  They are pretty stinky too, just like manure, an inevitable part of our daily existence, yet even more onerous.  However, spread out where needed, those collective taxes fertilize and grow our communities, our schools, our roads, our health care (and a few other things we may wish would not be funded).

So I must get to work spreading numbers across my desktop in the hope they may make sense and yield fruit of their own, sometime, somewhere.

The Cents of Spring.

pearblossom2416

appleblossom2416

fullbloom