I’ll tell a secret instead: poems hide. In the bottoms of our shoes, they are sleeping. They are the shadows drifting across our ceilings the moment before we wake up. What we have to do is live in a way that lets us find them. ~Naomi Shihab Nye from “Valentine for Ernest Mann”from The Red Suitcase
I was oblivious a hundred times a day to their secrets: dripping right over me in the shower, rising over hills bright pink, tucked under a toadstool, breathing deeply as I auscultated a chest, unfolding with each blossom, folding with each piece of laundry, settling heavily on my eyelids at night.
The day I awoke to them was the day 23 years ago when thousands of innocents died in sudden cataclysm of airplanes and buildings and fire — people not knowing when they got up that day it would be their last.
And such tragic tumbling of life happens without cease – from wars, gun violence, suicide, pandemics and preventable diseases – our world weeps and hearts continue to break.
Suddenly poems show themselves. I try to see, listen, touch, smell, taste as if each day would be my last. I try to feel like a leaf about to let go.
I have learned to live in a way that lets me see through the hiddenness and now it overwhelms me. Poems – sad, insightful, clever, funny, and mysterious – are everywhere I look.
And I don’t know if I have enough time left to write them all down.
One-Time
Monthly
Yearly
Make a one-time or recurring donation to support daily Barnstorming posts
She skimmed the yellow water like a moth, Trailing her feet across the shallow stream; She saw the berries, paused and sampled them Where a slight spider cleaned his narrow tooth. Light in the air, she fluttered up the path, So delicate to shun the leaves and damp, Like some young wife, holding a slender lamp To find her stray child, or the moon, or both. Even before she reached the empty house, She beat her wings ever so lightly, rose, Followed a bee where apples blew like snow; And then, forgetting what she wanted there, Too full of blossom and green light to care, She hurried to the ground, and slipped below. ~James Wright “My Grandmother’s Ghost” from Above the River: The Complete Poems
…now you have taught me (but how late) my lack. I see the chasm. And everything you are was making My heart into a bridge by which I might get back From exile, and grow man. And now the bridge is breaking.
For this I bless you as the ruin falls. The pains You give me are more precious than all other gains. ~C.S. Lewis from “As the Ruin Falls”
Early one morning, we heard a sound, someone carefully pushing a door open, but both doors were closed. The air stirred. A whirring echoed through the room. That night we had left a small lamp on. In front of it, each time it orbited, the dark shape of a bird. ~Tina Barry from “Another Haunting” from I Tell Henrietta
when my father had been dead a week I woke with his voice in my ear I sat up in bed and held my breath and stared at the pale closed door
white apples and the taste of stone
if he called again I would put on my coat and galoshes ~Donald Hall “White Apples”
I saw my grandma’s ghost once.
She was the only grandparent I actually knew and who actually knew me — the others were lost before I was born or I was too young to realize what I had lost.
She had lived a hard life after her mother’s death when she was only 12, taking over the household duties for her father and younger brother while leaving school forever. She married too young to an abusive alcoholic, lost her first child to lymphoma at age 8 and took her three remaining children to safety away from their father. For a year, they lived above a seedy restaurant where she cooked seven days a week to make ends meet.
But there was grace too. The marriage somehow got patched together after Grandpa found God and sobriety – after his sudden death while sitting in church, Grandma’s faith never wavered. Her garden soil yielded beautiful flowers she planted and nurtured and picked to sell. Her children and grandchildren welcomed her many open armed visits and hugs.
She was busy planning her first overseas trip of a lifetime at age 72 when we noticed her eyes looked yellow. Only two weeks later she was bed-bound in unrelenting pain due to pancreatic cancer, gazing heaven-ward instead of Europe-bound. Her dreams had been dashed so quickly, she barely realized her itinerary and ultimate destination had unalterably changed.
I was nearly 16 at the time, too absorbed in my own teenage cares and concerns to really notice how quickly she was fading and failing like a wilted flower. Instead I was picking fights with my stressed parents, obsessing about taking my driver’s license driving test, distracted by all the typical social pressures of high school life.
Her funeral was unbearable for me as I had never really said goodbye – only one brief hospital visit when she was hardly recognizable in her anguish and jaundice. She looked so different, I hung back from her bedside. Regrettably, I didn’t even try to hold her hand.
Mere weeks after she had been lowered into the ground next to her husband and young daughter, she came back to me in a dream.
I was sleeping when the door opened into my dark bedroom, waking me as the bright hallway light pushed its way via a shimmering beam to my bed. My Grandma Kittie stood in my bedroom doorway, a fully recognizable silhouette backlit by the illumination. She silently stood there, looking at me.
Startled, I sat up in my bed and said to her, “Grandma, why are you here? You died. We buried you.”
She lifted her hands toward me in a gesture of reassurance and said:
“I want you to know I’m okay and always will be. You will be too.”
She then gave a little wave, turned and left, closing the door behind her. I woke suddenly with a gasp in my darkened bedroom and knew I had just been visited.
She hadn’t come to say goodbye or to tell me she loved me — I knew that already.
She had come to me, with the transient fragility of something with wings, floating gently back into the world to be my bridge. She blossomed in the light she brought with her.
Grandma came to mend my broken heart and plant it with peace.
AI image created for this post
You’re in a better place I’ve heard a thousand times And at least a thousand times I’ve rejoiced for you
But the reason why I’m broken The reason why I cry Is how long must I wait to be with you
I close my eyes and I see your face If home’s where my heart is then I’m out of place Lord, won’t you give me strength To make it through somehow I’ve never been more homesick than now
Help me Lord cause I don’t understand your ways The reason why I wonder if I’ll ever know But, even if you showed me The hurt would be the same Cause I’m still here so far away from home
In Christ, there are no goodbyes And in Christ, there is no end
So I’ll hold onto Jesus With all that I have To see you again To see you again
And I close my eyes and I see your face If home’s where my heart is then I’m out of place Lord, won’t you give me strength To make it through somehow
Won’t you give me strength To make it through somehow Won’t you give me strength To make it through somehow I’ve never been more homesick than now ~Millard Bart Marshall
One-Time
Monthly
Yearly
Make a one-time or recurring donation to support daily Barnstorming posts
when the sun peeks over the horizon to greet the day and spread golden honey warmth to the dark, sleepy earth
when the birds begin to stir and twitter and tune their songs to one another
when the trees rustle as the morning breeze opens her eyes from slumber, and the dew is heavy on the blades of grass
when I know morning has come once again and we are not lost to the night, even as we are not lost to the day
light dawns, and I can move again breathing in streams of fresh morning air lighting a candle for rejuvenation and praying the day in with ginger and salt and clay
…deeds are done which appear so evil to us and people suffer such terrible evils that it does not seem as though any good will ever come of them; and we consider this, sorrowing and grieving over it
so that we cannot find peace in the blessed contemplation of God as we should do; and this is why:
our reasoning powers are so blind now, so humble and so simple
And this is what he means where he says, “You shall see for yourself that all manner of things shall be well”, as if he said, “Pay attention to this now, faithfully and confidently, and at the end of time you will truly see it in the fullness of joy. ~Julian of Norwich fromRevelations of Divine Love
Even when, yet again, innocents – our children, our teachers – do not wake, as if by magic, to see this golden morn
I’m heavy laden as the tears of this dewy dawn touch every lost and grieving thing
there is no reason for this to happen again and again and again ~we weep until we are dry as dust~
Pay attention to this now, to this mourning for innocents who are lost to the night and the day.
If only we listen and act, shall this be made well.
AI image created for this post
One-Time
Monthly
Yearly
Make a one-time or recurring donation to support daily Barnstorming posts
What is the change in summer of which one expects nothing? Nature is not reborn, nor does she perish except in the streaks of a rare elm that has outlived itself. The weather conceals nothing: the months are temperate, even in the hardest rains one may walk without a coat. The gardens flourish, and bear without a gardener’s help.
Sitting in windows at night black cats and their masters look out on summer; the moon feeds their yellow visions, the opened windows cool them… One wants nothing to happen forever, and thinks of those who perhaps are ready to die, except that it is summer and they are putting it off. ~Robley Wilson from “In Summer, Nothing Happens”
photo of supermoon by Harry Rodenbergerphoto by Harry Rodenberger
We’ve attended three memorial services so far this summer, and at least one more is on the calendar. Given a choice, all of these friends would have preferred to keep living at least through the summer, but God had other plans.
An eternal summer is in store for them, even if they wanted to put it off for a little while longer.
Each day becomes an unwarranted gift of time, summertime or not. I would like to sit and watch while nothing whatsoever happens.
Now I’m aware: nothing happening is actually something very special.
AI image created for this post
One-Time
Monthly
Yearly
Make a one-time or recurring donation to support daily Barnstorming posts.
On the second day of fog, she goes to meet it sits on the broad root of a broken down apple tree, remembers being a child in such fog, searching for fairy houses. She hears movement in the grass, keeps very still while the veil of haze rises to treetops bronzed by the burn of the sun. Slowly horses and deer appear all around her, they graze close together, nosing fallen apples, until she forgets this is still a fallen world. ~Lonnie Hull DuPont, “On the Second Day of Fog” from She Calls the Moon by Its Name
When despair for the world grows in me and I wake in the night at the least sound in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be, I go and lie down where the wood drake rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds. I come into the peace of wild things who do not tax their lives with forethought of grief. I come into the presence of still water. And I feel above me the day-blind stars waiting with their light. For a time I rest in the grace of the world, and am free. ~Wendell Berry “The Peace of Wild Things“
When our grandchildren come to visit, I watch as yet another generation rediscovers the mystery of what we know about the joys and sorrows of this fallen but redeemed world.
I am reminded there is light beyond the fearsome darkness, there is peace amid the chaos, there is a smile behind the tears, there is stillness within the noisiness there is rest despite the restlessness, there is grace – ah, there is grace as inevitably the old gives way to the new.
One-Time
Monthly
Yearly
Make a one-time or recurring donation to support daily Barnstorming posts
When I was with the green hummingbird, it became the company I didn’t know I needed. We spent our mornings together, and after it went its way, I read and wrote.
…a hummingbird, essential company in the endless journey through dead-ends, restarts, and new beginnings – as well as a reminder of the beauty of the world, the power of the sun, the rain, love, and life, all packed inside the body of a creature that weighs less than an ounce. A sign that within the smallest detail, the whole world is present, and just as the gravity and magnificence of life is present in the mountains, oceans, stars, and everything larger than life, it is also brilliantly present in its smallest bird. ~Zito Madu from “Hummingbirds are Wondrous” in Plough
He took her by the hand and said to her, “Talitha koum!” (which means “Little girl, I say to you, get up!”). Immediately the girl stood up and began to walk around (she was twelve years old). At this they were completely astonished. Mark 5:41-43
Little girl. Old girl. Old boy. Old boys and girls with high blood pressure and arthritis, and young boys and girls with tattoos and body piercing.
You who believe, and you who sometimes believe and sometimes don’t believe much of anything, and you who would give almost anything to believe if only you could.
You happy ones and you who can hardly remember what it was like once to be happy. You who know where you’re going and how to get there and you who much of the time aren’t sure you’re getting anywhere.
“Get up,” he says, all of you – all of you! – and the power that is in him is the power to give life not just to the dead like the child, but to those who are only partly alive, which is to say to people like you and me who much of the time live with our lives closed to the wild beauty and miracle of things, including the wild beauty and miracle of every day we live and even of ourselves. ~Frederick Buechner from Secrets in the Dark
I worried a lot. Will the garden grow, will the rivers flow in the right direction, will the earth turn as it was taught, and if not how shall I correct it?
Was I right, was I wrong, will I be forgiven, can I do better?
Will I ever be able to sing, even the sparrows can do it and I am, well, hopeless.
Is my eyesight fading or am I just imagining it, am I going to get rheumatism, lockjaw, dementia?
Finally I saw that worrying had come to nothing. And I gave it up. And took my old body and went out into the morning, and sang. ~Mary Oliver “I Worried” from Swan: Poems and Prose Poems
Christ said to the dead girl, “Get up.” And she did.
He also tells us to get up, get moving – despite everything that holds us back.
I know there are times when I feel immobilized from tiredness, worry, hopelessness, fear. I hear His reminder: get up and go anyway.
God has given us a world of wild beauty and miraculous things; time to get up and take our place in it.
AI image created for this post
One-Time
Monthly
Yearly
Make a one-time or recurring donation to support daily Barnstorming posts
I am not resigned to the shutting away Of loving hearts in the hard ground. So it is, and so it will be, for so it has been, time out of mind: Into the darkness they go, the wise and the lovely. Crowned With lilies and with laurel they go; but I am not resigned. Lovers and thinkers, into the earth with you. Be one with the dull, the indiscriminate dust. A fragment of what you felt, of what you knew, A formula, a phrase remains,—but the best is lost. The answers quick and keen, the honest look, the laughter, the love,— They are gone. They are gone to feed the roses. Elegant and curled Is the blossom. Fragrant is the blossom. I know. But I do not approve. More precious was the light in your eyes Than all the roses in the world. Down, down, down into the darkness of the grave Gently they go, the beautiful, the tender, the kind; Quietly they go, the intelligent, the witty, the brave. I know. But I do not approve. And I am not resigned. ~Edna St. Vincent Millay “Dirge Without Music”
These hearts were woven of human joys and cares, Washed marvelously with sorrow, swift to mirth. The years had given them kindness. Dawn was theirs, And sunset, and the colors of the earth.
These had seen movement, and heard music; known Slumber and waking; loved; gone proudly friended; Felt the quick stir of wonder; sat alone; Touched flowers and furs and cheeks. All this is ended.
There are waters blown by changing winds to laughter And lit by the rich skies, all day. And after, Frost with a gesture, stays the waves that dance And wandering loveliness. He leaves a white Unbroken glory, a gathered radiance, A width, a shining peace, under the night. ~Rupert Brooke “All This is Ended”
Each Memorial Day weekend without fail, we gather with family, have lunch, reminisce, and trek to a cemetery high above Puget Sound to catch up with our relatives who lie there still. Some for well over 100 years, some too recent, some we knew and loved and miss every day, others not so much, unknown to us except on genealogy charts, their names and dates and these stones all that is left of them:
the red-haired great-grandmother who died too young, the aunt who was eight with lymphoma, the Yukon river boat captain, the logger and stump farmer, the unmarried teacher who bequeathed an oil well to her church, the two in-laws who lie next to each other but could not co-exist in the same room while they lived and breathed.
Yet we know each of these (as we know ourselves and others) was tender and kind, though flawed and broken, was beautiful and strong, though wrinkled and frail, was hopeful and faithful, though too soon in the ground.
We know this about them as we know it about ourselves: someday we too will feed roses, the light in our eyes transformed into elegant swirls emitting the fragrant scent of heaven.
No one asks if we approve. Nor am I resigned to this but only know: So it is, so it has been, so it will be.
“Your attention, please,” the mate’s voice says, “we are slowing a moment for a memorial,” and sure enough we all do, all of us, even those entangled in a bustle to get to the other side, restless chunks of festering business waiting, little urgencies pricking us into a stressed huff. Below on the car deck a small group slowly forms, and a mate lowers a rope, beckons them forward, the ferry engines slowing whatever our hurry, and we are all coasting together on a rainy sea.
A heavy-set woman unwraps a nondescript urn from a carefully held towel, handing it in turn to an ungainly boy, a shy girl, an older man, and she watches as each tips the urn to scatter dust into a windy vortex off the ferry’s stern, a fine grey mist streaming over the roiled wake in a high breeze before settling, disappearing into grey oblivion of sea, sky, and late afternoon.
As the ferry’s horn sounds three long blasts, the four bow heads. The woman hesitates, hides her face a moment in the towel, kisses each of her party, and shakes the mate’s hand. He speaks, his words lost to us in sea sounds and engines, then looks up to the bridge, waves, and the small group, holding hands, rejoins some two hundred of us who have in silence watched this mini-delay in our grey crossing. The ferry’s engines begin their normal thrum to push us forward again against a grey sea and under a low, grey sky, where a fine dust disappeared, and white seagulls rise and cry. ~Rob Jacques, “Memorial, Washington State Ferry” from Adagio for Su Tung-p’o
There is a sense of timelessness while riding on the ferry runs between the islands and peninsulas in Washington state. While driving my car on the busy freeways in the region, I am at the mercy of the weather, other drivers and all manner of delays. When I’m on a ferry, I become mere witness, only a rider seeking peaceful passage. Someone else worries about safely getting from Point A to Point B.
I’m able to breathe: watching the waves and the wake, the antics of gulls and cormorants, and rarely, an orca pod.
Next week is a time of memorial and remembrance of those who have passed into eternity. The ashes of my parents rest in the ground under a plaque that I visit annually with my family. Dad would have preferred his ashes to be cast out upon on the open water that he loved, but Mom chose a cemetery plot for them both, a more familiar resting place for a girl who grew up in the Palouse farmlands, no where near large bodies of water.
Last year, a good friend chose to be composted; he rests now in his beloved orchard, feeding the trees that continue to bear fruit.
No matter where our mortal bodies eventually find our rest, we hope to be remembered.
Our souls have risen, free.
video taken on the Samish Sea (Puget Sound) from my friend Andrew
One-Time
Monthly
Yearly
Make a one-time or recurring donation to support daily Barnstorming posts
Barnstorming 