Tag: fern

Giving Alms to the Poor

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That year I discovered the virtues
of plants as companions: they don’t
argue, they don’t ask for much,
they don’t stay out until 3:00 A.M., then
lie to you about where they’ve been….

I can’t summon the ambition
to repot this grape ivy, of this sad
old cactus, or even to move them out
onto the porch for the summer,
where their lives would certainly
improve. I give them
a grudging dash of water – that’s all
they get. I wonder if they suspect
that like Hamlet I rehearse murder
all hours of the day and night,
considering the town dump
and compost pile as possible graves….

The truth is that if I permit them
to live, they will go on giving
alms to the poor: sweet air, miraculous
flowers, the example of persistence.
~Jane Kenyon “Killing the Plants” from The Boat of Quiet Hours

During my dorm-room years
and city apartment dwelling days,
this farm girl had to reconcile
that no pets were allowed,
so I surrounded myself with an indoor garden,
every square inch of window sill
occupied by a living thing
whose survival depended only partially on me.

Those plants sustained me,
cheered me, moved me,
carried by me to new windows
with better light and grander views.

Despite my occasional neglect,
they usually persisted, often thrived,
and gave back to my shriveled city spirit
far beyond any water or repotting I offered.

A start from my grandmother’s old fern
divided decades earlier from her cousin’s plant,
originally a start from a long-passed auntie,
this 100 year old fern traveled far and wide with me
until it dried up, turned brown and gave up the ghost.

Having given a start to my sister years before,
she divided it so the fern came back home
staying happily green in my kitchen window.

Somehow these miracles in chlorophyll
knew just what I needed when I needed it:
they fed me when I was starving
for something alive,
something beautiful,
something that knew exactly what to do
and what to become
when I had no clue what would happen next.

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Let Us Be Left

barnstormingblog1 Comment

galena

 

 

tony55182

 

The darksome burn, horseback brown,
His rollrock highroad roaring down,
In coop and in comb the fleece of his foam
Flutes and low to the lake falls home.

A windpuff-bonnet of fawn-froth
Turns and twindles over the broth
Of a pool so pitchblack, fell-frowning,
It rounds and rounds Despair to drowning.
Degged with dew, dappled with dew,
Are the groins of the braes that the brook treads through,
Wiry heathpacks, flitches of fern,
And the beadbonny ash that sits over the burn.
What would the world be, once bereft
Of wet and wildness? Let them be left,
O let them be left, wildness and wet;
Long live the weeds and the wilderness yet.
~Gerard Manley Hopkins “Inversnaid”

 

dewdropdandy2

 

 

pastureponies

 

dewdropdandy

 

There is despair in the wilderness of untamed hearts.
Such wildness lies just beneath the surface;
it rounds and rounds, almost out of reach.
How are we spared drowning in its pitchblack pool?
How can we thrill to the beauty rather than be sucked into the darkness?
He came not to destroy the world’s wildness,
but to pull us, gasping,
from its unforgiving clutches as we sink in deep.As weeds surviving in the wilderness,
we must grow, flourish, and witness to a wild world bereft.
O let us be left.
Let us be left.

 

 

waterfalls

 

ferndaisies

 

 

tony5518

Earth’s Sweet Being

barnstormingblog1 Comment
brackenunfurl2
roseleafrain
landscape57185
Nothing is so beautiful as Spring –         
   When weeds, in wheels, shoot long and lovely and lush;         
   Thrush’s eggs look little low heavens, and thrush         
Through the echoing timber does so rinse and wring         
The ear, it strikes like lightnings to hear him sing;
   The glassy peartree leaves and blooms, they brush         
   The descending blue; that blue is all in a rush         
With richness; the racing lambs too have fair their fling.         
What is all this juice and all this joy?         
   A strain of the earth’s sweet being in the beginning
In Eden garden. – Have, get, before it cloy,         
   Before it cloud, Christ, lord, and sour with sinning,         
Innocent mind and Mayday in girl and boy,         
   Most, O maid’s child, thy choice and worthy the winning.        
~Gerard Manley Hopkins  “Spring”
brokenegg
landscape57183
Once, we were innocent,
now, no longer.
Cloyed and clouded by sin.
Given a choice, we chose sour over the sweetness we were born to,
giving up walks together in the cool of the day
to feed an appetite that  could never be sated.
God made a choice to win us back with His own blood
as if we are worthy of Him.
He says we are.
He dies to prove it.
Every day I try to believe
earth can be sweet and beautiful again.
futurepears
pinkdogwood20188
tiredtrillium

A Wreath of Fern and Cloud Puffs

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ice216

cloud

Others taunt me with having knelt at well-curbs
Always wrong to the light, so never seeing
Deeper down in the well than where the water
Gives me back in a shining surface picture
Me myself in the summer heaven godlike
Looking out of a wreath of fern and cloud puffs.
Once, when trying with chin against a well-curb,
I discerned, as I thought, beyond the picture,
Through the picture, a something white, uncertain,
Something more of the depths—and then I lost it.
Water came to rebuke the too clear water.
One drop fell from a fern, and lo, a ripple
Shook whatever it was lay there at bottom,
Blurred it, blotted it out. What was that whiteness?
Truth? A pebble of quartz? For once, then, something.

~ Robert Frost, “For Once, Then, Something”

fernhill

If I Might…

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vetchant

dandeclover2

redweed2

brackenunfurl2

If I might see another Spring
I’d laugh to-day, to-day is brief;
I would not wait for anything;
I’d use to-day that cannot last,
Be glad to-day and sing.
~Christina Georgina Rossetti from “Another Spring”

 

peonyheart2

sluggy

grassheadwall

dogwoodquartet

The Winged Keys

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maplewings

febwoods

The set seed and the first bulbs showing.
The silence that brings the deer.

The trees are full of handles and hinges;
you can make out keyholes, latches in the leaves.

Buds tick and crack in the sun, break open
slowly in a spur of green.

*

The small-change colours of the river bed:
these stones of copper, silver, gold.

The rock-rose in the waste-ground
finding some way to bloom. The long

spill of birdsong. Flowers, all
turned to face the hot sky. Nothing stirs.

*

That woody clack of antlers.
In yellow and red, the many griefs of autumn.

The dawn light through amber leaves
and the trees are lanterned, blown

the next day to empty stars.
Smoke in the air; the air, turning.

*

Under a sky of stone and pink
faring in from the north and promising snow:

the blackbird.
In his beak, a victory of worms.

The winged seed of the maple,
the lost keys under the ash.
~Robin Robertson “Finding the Keys”

 

If only there were verbal keys as plentiful
as those that twirl from the maple branch,
words freed, ready to unlatch life’s secrets
and push ajar the doors of heavy hearts.

May we open just enough
to listen,
unlock horns,
and receive what falls
into our empty arms.

deerskull

deerrubbingtree

ferngrove

Harvest Test

barnstormingblog1 Comment
fallenapple
woods24
Ripeness is
what falls away with ease.
Not only the heavy apple,
the pear,
but also the dried brown strands
of autumn iris from their core.
To let your body
love this world
that gave itself to your care
in all of its ripeness,
with ease,
and will take itself from you
in equal ripeness and ease,
is also harvest.
And however sharply
you are tested –
this sorrow, that great love –
it too will leave on that clean knife.
–Jane Hirshfield from “The October Palace”
lace4
woods9
woods10