Tag: Farm Life

Fearsome Things to See

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Not much to me is yonder lane  
 Where I go every day;  
But when there’s been a shower of rain  
 And hedge-birds whistle gay,  
I know my lad that’s out in France
 With fearsome things to see  
Would give his eyes for just one glance  
 At our white hawthorn tree.

   .    .    .    .  

Not much to me is yonder lane  
 Where he so longs to tread:
But when there’s been a shower of rain  
I think I’ll never weep again  
 Until I’ve heard he’s dead.
~Siegfried Sassoon “The Hawthorn Tree”

I drove West
in the season between seasons.
I left behind suburban gardens.
Lawnmowers.  Small talk.

Under low skies, past splashes of coltsfoot,
I assumed
the hard shyness of Atlantic light
and the superstitious aura of hawthorn.

All I wanted then was to fill my arms with
sharp flowers,
to seem from a distance, to be part of
that ivory, downhill rush.  But I knew,

I had always known,
the custom was
not to touch hawthorn.
 Not to bring it indoors for the sake of

the luck
such constraint would forfeit–
a child might die, perhaps, or an unexplained
fever speckle heifers.  So I left it

stirring on those hills
with a fluency
only water has.  And, like water, able
to redefine land.  And free to seem to be–

for anglers,
and for travellers astray in
the unmarked lights of a May dusk–
the only language spoken in those parts.
~Eavan Boland “White Hawthorn in the West of Ireland”

The bird-sowed hawthorn bush along the lane to our back field has suddenly become a blooming tree, staking out its place alongside the trail the horses follow to their pasture. This May, it is a white flame against the dark woods.

Though we didn’t intend for it to be there, we’ll leave it be. Hawthorns are great bird habitat and a haven for honeybees. They are found in most hedge rows in the United Kingdom, impenetrable due to their fierce thorns and criss-cross network of branches, a historic symbol of the toughness and persistence of the Celtic people. Though we don’t need a hedge row here, I appreciate the tree’s reminder it has a place in myth and lore.

It will never be a hospitable tree like the lone fir tree that graces our hill, or the big leaf maple where children climb, or the black walnut whose branches support the treehouse. But it will be a white beacon every May, portending the summer to come, and if it bears fruit, it will feed the birds that nest in its interior.

And like the poem written by WWI soldier/poet Sassoon, it will be a bittersweet reminder of the familiar comfort of home, even though sharp thorns abound among the blossoms. Those thorns are nothing compared to the despair found in the fearsome trenches of warfare.

Siegfried Sassoon’s handwritten poem

along fair Arran’s shores
the swans sing soft of tale of yore,
of a young love taken to sea

the two were hand in glove
like sparrows bound in sacred love
a tune that only they can sing

a tree of unity
they planted by the green eyed sea
the branch would hold their love through time

a sailor lad was he
he said,”dont cry my lovely, mhari
before the moon is full i’ll return”

I’ll wait for thee and she sang to him

the moon shone full and bright
and home he sailed mid-summers night
the tree so young and blossoming

they slept among the green
the world was light and dreams serene
the fires in their hearts burned bright

Where moss-grown boulders stand,
he took her by the lily hand
and there they wed at break of day

the seas know not of hearts
and once again the two must part.
“it wont be long, i swear to thee.

please wait for me.”
and she sang to him

The hawthorn tree has grown,
10 years she walked shores alone,
she hears his whisper in the leaves

Home is the sailor lad,
home in the sea, forever plaid,
Under the wide and starry sky

Yes, I will wait for thee,
By mountain, sea and tree;
And on the wind you’ll hear my love,

for at the fall of day
Beneath the leaves where once we lay
I’ll sit and sing i’ll wait for thee

come back to me….
music and lyrics by Fae Wiedenhoeft

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Only the Light Moves

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Veil after veil of thin dusky gauze is lifted, 
and by degrees 
the forms and colours of things are restored to them, 
and we watch the dawn 
remaking the world in its antique pattern.
~Oscar Wilde from The Picture of Dorian Gray

Never did sun more beautifully steep
In his first splendour, valley, rock, or hill;
Ne’er saw I, never felt, a calm so deep!
The river glideth at his own sweet will:
Dear God! the very houses seem asleep;
And all that mighty heart is lying still!
~William Wordsworth from “Composed Upon Westminster Bridge, September 3, 1802”

Dawn is the time when nothing breathes, the hour of silence. 
Everything is transfixed, only the light moves.
~Leonora Carrington

Looking for God is the first thing and the last,
but in between so much trouble, so much pain.
~Jane Kenyon from “With the Dog at Sunrise”

In the moments before dawn
when glow gently tints
the inside of horizon’s eyelids,
the black of midnight
wanes to mere shadow,
the fear of night forgotten.

Gloaming dusk transposed to gleaming dawn,
its backlit silhouettes stark
as a dark hurting earth
slowly opens her eyes
to greet a new and glorious morn.

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Thoughts We Cannot Say

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A hundred thousand birds salute the day:–
        One solitary bird salutes the night:
Its mellow grieving wiles our grief away,
        And tunes our weary watches to delight;
It seems to sing the thoughts we cannot say,
        To know and sing them, and to set them right;
Until we feel once more that May is May,
        And hope some buds may bloom without a blight.
This solitary bird outweighs, outvies,
        The hundred thousand merry-making birds
Whose innocent warblings yet might make us wise
Would we but follow when they bid us rise,
        Would we but set their notes of praise to words
And launch our hearts up with them to the skies.
~Christina Rossetti “A Hundred Thousand Birds”

photo by Harry Rodenberger

Birds afloat in air’s current,
sacred breath? No, not breath of God,
it seems, but God
the air enveloping the whole
globe of being.
It’s we who breathe, in, out, in, the sacred,
leaves astir, our wings
rising, ruffled—but only saints
take flight…
But storm or still,
numb or poised in attention,
we inhale, exhale, inhale,
encompassed, encompassed.
~Denise Levertov from “In Whom We Live and Move and Have Our Being” from The Stream and the Sapphire

As if reluctant to let go the setting sun last night,
one lone bird still sang a twilight song,
long after the others fell asleep,
their heads tucked neatly under their wings.

This lone bird had not yet finished with the day,
breathing in and out its plaintive melody,
articulating my thoughts I could not say.

And before a hint of light this May morning,
I am swept from my dreams
by a full chorus singing from the same perch,
no longer a lone voice, but hundreds.

My day is launched by the warbling songs,
but I cannot forget twilight’s one reluctant bird
who fought the impending darkness using only its voice.

I too fight back the darkness with what I write here,
if I can keep it at bay:
inhaling, exhaling, encompassed in Breath.
I want to sing out light to Light and live light in Light.

No darkness here.

I hear a bird chirping, up in the sky
I’d like to be free like that spread my wings so high I
see the river flowing water running by
I’d like to be that river, see what I might find

I feel the wind a blowin’, slowly changing time
I’d like to be that wind, I’d swirl and the shape sky
I smell the flowers blooming, opening for spring
I’d like to be those flowers, open to everything

I feel the seasons change, the leaves, the snow and sun
I’d like to be those seasons, made up and undone
I taste the living earth, the seeds that grow within
I’d like to be that earth, a home where life begins

I see the moon a risin’, reaching into night
I’d like to be that moon, a knowing glowing light
I know the silence as the world begins to wake
I’d like to be that silence as the morning breaks

He doesn’t know the world at all
Who stays in his nest and doesn’t go out.
He doesn’t know what birds know best
Nor what I sing about, Nor what I sing about, Nor what sing about:
That the world is full of loveliness.

When dew-drops sparkle in the grass
And earth is aflood with morning light. light
A blackbird sings upon a bush
To greet the dawning after night,
the dawning after night,
the dawning after night.
Then I know how fine it is to live.

Hey, try to open your heart to beauty;
Go to the woods someday
And weave a wreath of memory there.
Then if tears obscure your way
You’ll know how wonderful it is
To be alive.
~Paul Read

Blossoming Time

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The year Dylan’s mother died
I picked sprays of apple blossom,
wound its pink, off-white shades
in raffia for you to take to him.

Every year it’s out I think of us,
the children, how apples bring
the tree so low, until they thud
to the lawn, drumming the end 

of summer. The blossom was heavy 
when Dylan’s mother was dying – 
old wood doing its best again –
and he, like you, was so young.
~Jackie Wills “Apple Blossom”

I can see, through the rifts of the apple-boughs,
 The delicate blue of the sky,                               
And the changing clouds with their marvellous tints
 That drift so lazily by.
And strange, sweet thoughts sing through my brain,
 And Heaven, it seemeth near;
Oh, is it not a rare, sweet time,
 The blossoming time of the year?
~Horatio Alger, Jr.  from “Apple Blossoms”

Is there anything in Spring so fair
As apple blossoms falling through the air?

When from a hill there comes a sudden breeze
That blows freshly through all the orchard trees.

The petals drop in clouds of pink and white,
Noiseless like snow and shining in the light.

Making beautiful an old stone wall,
Scattering a rich fragrance as they fall.

There is nothing I know of to compare
With apple blossoms falling through the air.
~Henry Adams Parker “Apple Blossoms”

The rain eases long enough
to allow blades of grass to stand back up
expectant, refreshed
yet unsuspecting,
primed for the mower’s next cutting swath.

Clusters of pink tinged blossoms
sway in response to my mower’s pass.
Apple buds bulge on ancient branches
in promise of fruit caressed
by honeybees’ tickling legs.

Though I bow low beneath the swollen blooms,
I’m still caught by snagging branches;
showers from hidden raindrop reservoirs
collected within blushing petal cups.

My face is anointed by perfumed apple tears.

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Let Live

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Let us not with one stone kill one bird, 
much less two. Let us never put a cat 
in a bag nor skin them, regardless 
of how many ways there are to do so. 
And let us never take the bull, especially 
by his gorgeous horns. What I mean is 

we could watch our tongues or keep 
silent. What I mean is we could scrub 
the violence from our speech. And if we find
truth in a horse’s mouth, let us bless her

ground-down molars, no matter how 
old she is, especially if she was given 
as a gift. Again, let’s open her mouth——that of the horse, 
I mean——let us touch that interdental space where 
no teeth grow, where the cold bit was made to grip. 
Touch her there, gently now, touch that gentle 

empty between her incisors and molars, rub her 
aching, vulnerable gums. Don’t worry: doing so calms her. 
Besides, she’s old now; she’s what we call 
broken; she won’t bite. She’s lived through 
two thirteen-year emergences of cicadas

and thought their rising a god infestation, 
thought each insect roiling up an iteration 
of the many names of god, because god to her is 
the grasses so what comes up from grass is
god. She would not say it that way. Nor would she

say the word cicada——words are hindrances 
to what can be spoken through the body, are 
what she tolerates when straddled, 
giddy-up on one side then whoa on the other. After, 
it’s all good girl, Mable, good girl, 
before the saddle sweat is rinsed cool 
with water from the hose and a carrot is offered 
flat from the palm. Yes, words being 

generally useless she listens instead 
to the confused rooster stuttering when the sun
burns overhead, when it’s warm enough
for those time-keepers to tunnel up from the 
dark and fill their wings to make them 
stiff and capable of flight. To her, it is the sound 

of winter-coming in her mane 
or the sound of winter-leaving in her mane——
yes, that sound——a liquid shushing 
like the blood-fill of stallion desire she knew once 
but crisper, a dry crinkle of fall 
leaves. Yes, that sound, as they fill their new wings 
then lumber to the canopy to demand
come here, come here, come 
here, now come. 

If this is a parable you don’t understand, 
then, dear human, stop listening for words. 
Listen instead for mane, wind, wings, 
wind, mane, wings, wings, wings. 
The lesson here is of the mare 
and of the insects, even of the rooster 
puffed and strutting past. Because now, 
now there is only one thing worth hearing, 
and it is the plea of every living being in that field 
we call ours, is the two-word commandment 
trilling from the trees: let live, let live, let live. 
Can you hear it? Please, they say. Please.
Let us live.  
~Nickole Brown “Parable”

When a governor writes about her decision to shoot her wayward dog and stinky goat, our reaction is about the injustice perpetrated on the dog more than her decision to play god with any animal she has responsibility for. I feel a twinge of guilt at the accusation. Who among us can throw stones?

God is clear we are meant to be caretakers of His Creation. Yet I still swat flies and trap mice – there is no pleasure in doing so, so I still ask for forgiveness for my lack of charity and decision to make my own existence more comfortable at the expense of another living thing.

I admit I fail Creation in myriad ways.

I have owned animals whose behavior brought me to my knees, sometimes literally with my face in the muck. I have wept over the loss of a deformed stillbirth foal and a pond of koi frozen in a bitter winter storm. The stories abound of my helplessness in the face of sadness and loss and frustration but I never wanted to become executioner.

I don’t live with cycles of cicada population booms but have experienced their overwhelming din and understood we are mere witnesses and not in control. We are not “little g” gods on this earth. We are its stewards.

Let us live and thrive together.

Please let us live.

photo by Emily Vander Haak

Letting It Go

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Sometimes they
go outside, maybe

move a rosebush
to the back yard or

clean a window.
Usually they

simply stand,
under a maple

or in a snowfall.
And this is often

when they see
a nuthatch on its

dizzy route down
a trunk, or

the quick flick
of a chickadee

across the yard
and onto a branch.

They don’t do
much. That’s for

others. They know
how to take things

for granted, know
what to miss.

Every morning
they make breakfast.

And when the sun
sets, they let it go.
~Jack Ridl “The Neighbors” from Practicing to Walk Like a Heron

We are surrounded by acres of farmland, blessed by neighbors hard at work cherishing the land and buildings and animals they own. They don’t take anything for granted and strive to preserve a heritage of good stewardship. Even so, they know when to sit back to appreciate the rhythms of the seasons.

There is joy in simply watching time pass by.

The land continues to teach us all, through the sweet springs, the sweaty summers, the colorful autumns and harsh winter winds. We need each other when the snow drifts high on our driveways, the power goes out, the well runs dry, or the garden produces far more than we can just use ourselves.

And when the sun sets — well, we watch it with awe.

Another day of letting it go, grateful for what our gentle neighbors share with us – those who are next door, those just down the road, and the I’m daily reminded of the generosity of those of you who take the time to stop by to read these words and say howdy.

To live in this world

you must be able
to do three things:
to love what is mortal;
to hold it

against your bones knowing
your own life depends on it;
and, when the time comes to let it go,
to let it go.
~Mary Oliver, “In Blackwater Woods”

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An Everlasting Quietness

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The simple words no longer work.
Neither do the grand ones.
Something about
The hanging bits of dark
Mixed with your hair.
The everlasting quietness
Attached to the deserted barn
Made me think I’d discovered you
But you already knew all about yourself
As we stood on the edge of a forest
With your dress as languid as the air,
The day made of spring wind and daffodils.
Then the sky appeared in blue patches
Among slow clouds,
Oak leaves came out on the trees,
Grass suddenly became green,
Filled with small animals that sing.
All the parts of spring were gathering,
The earth was being created all over again
One piece at a time
Just for you.
~Tom Hennen “Found on the Earth” From Darkness Sticks To Everything

I’m waking from wintry doldrums,
to earlier mornings, longer evenings,
healing from weeks of cold and weariness.

It is as if all has been rebirthed,
vivid with light and songs and color and smells –
I cannot imagine not sharing it all.

This renewal feels so personal,
as if just for me –
yet I know others are waking too.

I face the morning sun in silence,
my eyelids closed and glowing,
warming in the light.

So I offer up this blessed cup of quiet,
steeped and ready to pour out,
just for you.

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Undigestible Waste

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Only we humans make waste that nature can’t digest. 
~Charles Moore

I beg to differ.
I’m here to say on Earth Day: humans aren’t the only guilty parties.

Over the decades, we have bought various styles of buckets and tubs to water our horses. Thanks to a destructive horse or two, we have a water bucket graveyard on our farm. Buckets, tubs, barrels, you name it – if it once had water in it, it is no longer functional and therefore is not only merely dead, it is really most sincerely dead.

We discovered early on that Haflingers do have a variety of creative techniques for letting me know it is feeding time. Over the years, we’ve had the gamut: the noisy neigher, the mane tosser, the foot stomper, the stall door striker, the play with your lips in the water and splash everything, and most irritating of all, the teeth raked across the woven wire front of the stall.

A few Haflingers do wait patiently for their turn, without fussing or furor, sometimes nickering a low “huhuhuhuhuh” of greeting. That is truly blissful in comparison.

We raised one filly whose chosen method of bringing attention to herself was to bump her belly up against her hanging rubber water buckets, making them bounce wildly about, spraying water everywhere, drenching her, and her stall in the process. She loved it. It was sport for her to see if she could tip the buckets to the point of emptying them and then knock them off their hooks so she could boot them around the stall, destroying a few in the process. Nothing made her happier.

Our current bucket destroyer is intent on making the kill rather than making noise for attention. I estimate he has gone through over a hundred buckets in 17 years. Nature does not digest this residue of his misbehavior.

Now when I buy a new bucket, I’m reminded:

I need to quit stomping and knocking doors in my impatience, as well as quit hollering when a quiet greeting is far more welcome and appropriate. I need to quit soaking everyone else with my splashing drama – after all, it yields me nothing more than empty broken buckets. Eventually, when I destroy every bucket in the place, I will get very thirsty and wish I hadn’t been so foolish and brash.

So if my horses are potentially trainable to have better manners, so am I. In fact, over the years, my horses have been busy teaching me a thing or two.

Now I need to find a recycle use for dead buckets.

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Trust This To Be True

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Trust that there is a tiger, muscular
Tasmanian, and sly, which has never been
seen and never will be seen by any human
eye. Trust that thirty thousand sword-
fish will never near a ship, that far
from cameras or cars elephant herds live
long elephant lives. Believe that bees
by the billions find unidentified flowers
on unmapped marshes and mountains. Safe
in caves of contentment, bears sleep.
Through vast canyons, horses run while slowly
snakes stretch beyond their skins in the sun.
I must trust all this to be true, though
the few birds at my feeder watch the window
with small flutters of fear, so like my own.
~Susan Kinsolving “Trust”

When I stand at the window watching the flickers, sparrows, finches, chickadees, and red-winged blackbirds come and go from the feeders, I wonder who is watching who.  They remain wary of me, fluttering away quickly if I approach.  They fear capture, even within a camera.  They have a life to be lived without my witness or participation.  So much happens that I never see or know about; it would be too overwhelming to absorb it all.

I understand:  I fear being captured too, my wrinkles and crinkles on full display.

Even if only for a moment as an image preserved forever, I know it doesn’t represent all I am, all I’ve done, all I feel, all my moments put together. The birds are, and I am, so much more than one moment.

Only God sees me fully in every moment that I exist, witness to my freedom and captivity, my loneliness and grief, my joy and tears, knowing my very best and my very worst.

And He is not overwhelmed by what He sees of me. He knows me so well, in Him I must trust.

photo by Tomomi Gibson
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The Neon Night

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Tonight his airplane comes in from the West,
and he rises from his seat, a suitcoat slung
over his arm. The flight attendant smiles
and says, “Have a nice visit,” and he nods
as if he has done this all before,
as if his entire life hasn’t been 170 acres
of corn and oats, as if a plow isn’t dragging
behind him through the sand and clay,
as if his head isn’t nestling in the warm
flank of a Holstein cow.

Only his hands tell the truth:
fingers thick as ropes, nails flat
and broken in the trough of endless chores.
He steps into the city warily, breathing
metal and exhaust, bewildered by the
stampede of humanity circling around him.
I want to ask him something familiar,
something about tractors and wagons,
but he is taken by the neon night,
crossing carefully against the light.
~Joyce Sutphen “My Father Comes to the City” from Straight Out of View.

Photo by Abby Mobley

I’ve lived a mostly quiet farm life over the last four years – minimized air travel and avoided big cities, as I was never fond of either even before COVID. Flying recently to visit family reminded me how challenging it is for me to get used to large crowds again, navigating unfamiliar urban highways and sitting with a hundred people in a winged metal tube 35,000 feet in the air.

But even farmers have to leave home once in a while. We shake the mud off our boots and brush the hayseeds from our hair, and try to act and be presentable in civilized society.

But my nervousness remains, knowing I’m out of my comfort zone, continually yearning for the wide open spaces of home.

Travel will take some getting used to again, but there is a world to be explored out there. It’s time to see how the city’s neon night compares with one illuminating barn light on the farm.