Tag: flight

Be Quiet as a Feather

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Today I’m flying low and I’m
not saying a word.
I’m letting all the voodoos of ambition sleep.

The world goes on as it must,
the bees in the garden rumbling a little,
the fish leaping, the gnats getting eaten.
And so forth.

But I’m taking the day off.
Quiet as a feather.
I hardly move though really I’m traveling
a terrific distance.

Stillness. One of the doors
into the temple.
~Mary Oliver “Today” from A Thousand Mornings

The moon drops one or two feathers into the field.   
The dark wheat listens.
Be still.
Now.
There they are, the moon’s young, trying
Their wings.

I stand alone by an elder tree, I do not dare breathe
Or move.
I listen.
The wheat leans back toward its own darkness,
And I lean toward mine.
~James Wright from “Beginning”

photo by Bob Tjoelker

Wherever it was
I was supposed to be
this morning—
whatever it was I said
I would be doing—
I was standing
at the edge of the field—
I was hurrying
through my own soul,
opening its dark doors—
I was leaning out;
I was listening.
— Mary Oliver from “Mockingbirds” from New and Selected Poems, Volume 2

“Hope” is the thing with feathers –
That perches in the soul –
And sings the tune without the words –
And never stops – at all –
~Emily Dickinson

Some days warrant stillness. Today is one.

As I walked our farm driveway,
I found this barn owl feather,
dropped from a passing wing overnight –

The past months have echoed loudly with ruckus and noise —
much too overwhelming and almost deafening.

Today I seek to be quiet as this feather,
lying silently in place, not saying a word.

I might actually begin to listen and hear again.  

A funny thing about feathers:
alone, each one is mere fluff.
Together — feathers create lift and power,
the strength and will to soar beyond the tether of gravity
and the pull of our inevitable mortality.

Joined and united,
we can rise above and fly away
as far as our life and breath can take us.

May peace be still.

AI image created for this post
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A Hidden Spark

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Tell us of a bypassed heart beating in 12C,
how the woman holds a stranger’s hand
to the battery sewn in beneath her collarbone,
and says feel this. Tell us of the man’s ear
listening across the aisle, hugging itself,
a fist long since blistered by blaze.
Outside, morning sun buckling up.
Inside, twitching bonesacks of bat, birdsong
erupting as light cracks the far jungle canopy.
Ten thousand feet below ours, a grey cat
tongues the morning’s butter left out to soft.
Last night we broke open the sweet folds
around two paper fortunes. One said variety.
One said caution. The woman in 12C would hold that
her heart needs its hidden spark, but the man shows
how some live the rest of their lives with half a face
remembering its before expression. Who was it
that said our souls know one another
by smell, like horses?
~Jenny Browne “Love Letter to a Stranger”

I spent part of last weekend in airports and airplanes among strangers. As an introvert who prefers to read and stay securely in my shell, I don’t often initiate conversation with the people next to me other than the necessary “excuse me” or “thanks” when appropriate. It is always a wonder to me when seat partners across from me or in front of me will find out all about each other’s lives, destinations and feelings about the state of the world. I wrote about this recently, sharing one of Billy Collins’ poems.

I am far more private and cautious – (ironic words to be written by a blogger of 14 years with over 20,000 followers). Even so, I’m struck by the affinity I feel for my fellow passengers as we embark on a trip by air – so different from each of us independently traveling down a highway in our individual vehicles. In an airplane, our fates are lashed together. What happens to one will happen to all.

Because we are bound together – sometimes randomly, sometimes not – I do believe that we might find kindred and sympathetic souls in a mysterious way when we are thrust among strangers. We are created for connection, whether by smell or sight or spirit.

And perhaps, scrolling through the internet, you have run across Barnstorming not expecting a connection to happen.

One never knows how we may become bound together.

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When I Was Sinking Down: Every Falling Thing

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Look at the birds. Even flying
is born

out of nothing. The first sky
is inside you, open

at either end of day.
The work of wings
was always freedom, fastening
one heart to every falling thing.
~Li-Young Lee “One Heart” from Book of My Nights

Each leaf falls as if it were motioning “no.”
And tonight the heavy earth is falling
away from all other stars in the loneliness.
We’re all falling. This hand here is falling.
And look at the other one. It’s in them all.
And yet there is Someone, whose hands
infinitely calm, holding up all this falling.
~Rainer Maria Rilke from “Autumn” translated by Robert Bly

Sometimes I wake from my sleep
with a palpitating start:
dreaming of falling,
an intense sinking down,
my body pitching and tumbling
yet somehow I land,
~oh so softly~
in my bed,
my fear quashed and cushioned by
wakening safe.

I feel caught up,
and held tightly,
rescued amid the fall.
Like leaves drifting down
from heaven’s orchard,
like wings that lift me to freedom,
the bed of earth rises to greet me
and Someone is waiting to cradle me there.

Our days may come to seventy years, or eighty, if our strength endures; yet the best of them are but trouble and sorrow, for they quickly pass, and we fly away.
Psalm 90:10

This Lenten season I reflect on the words of the 19th century southern spiritual hymn “What Wondrous Love is This”

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Ascending Together

barnstormingblog1 Comment

At the gate, I sit in a row of blue seats
with the possible company of my death,
this sprawling miscellany of people—
carry-on bags and paperbacks—

that could be gathered in a flash
into a band of pilgrims on the last open road.
Not that I think
if our plane crumpled into a mountain

we would all ascend together,
holding hands like a ring of skydivers,
into a sudden gasp of brightness,
or that there would be some common place

for us to reunite to jubilize the moment,
some spaceless, pillarless Greece
where we could, at the count of three,
toss our ashes into the sunny air.

It’s just that the way that man has his briefcase
so carefully arranged,
the way that girl is cooling her tea,
and the flow of the comb that woman

passes through her daughter’s hair . . .
and when you consider the altitude,
the secret parts of the engines,
and all the hard water and the deep canyons below . . .

well, I just think it would be good if one of us
maybe stood up and said a few words,
or, so as not to involve the police,
at least quietly wrote something down.
~Billy Collins “Passengers”

I don’t spend much time in airports these days, but I know many who must depend on airplanes to get them where they need to go to see the people they need to see.

Due to some recent horrifying airplane mishaps in the news, I know many say prayers as they sit in airports awaiting their flights and their fates.

Instead of dealing with airports and the sad necessity of leaving on jet planes, I walk on my own two feet out to our farm’s hilly fields, noticing many more jets passing overhead than I remember from past years. Most aren’t as low as I would expect for take offs and landings from Vancouver (B.C.) International Airport an hour north of us or descending for an approach to SeaTac International 100 miles to the south. They are in mid-flight mode, at least 35,000-45,000 feet above us, carrying their loads and passengers in almost guaranteed safety.

I have found a website that shows real-time location of flights all over the world. I can literally stand on our hill looking at a flight overhead while checking my phone to see where it has come from and where it is going. In some high tech way, I feel linked with those people so far above me in that plane, strangers though they be.

Most of these flights are from, or bound for Japan or Korea, to or from the east coast or midwest United States. Apparently these flights are taking a longer circuit over the Pacific Ocean to avoid going too close to Russian air space. They have a long flight ahead as they pass the coastline here in northwest Washington and over Vancouver Island. My husband and I have made that trek over the Pacific to Japan a half dozen times. I can easily imagine myself seated in the economy section, trying to keep my legs from stiffening up over 10+ hours, distracting myself watching movies on the inflight channels.

Instead of having leg cramps, I am here with my dogs and farm cat leaving a trail of footprints in a frosty winter field. Above me, a plane leaves a condensation trail which blurs, fades and disappears in the evening light.

I stand on a hillside at home, someone living out my days in this spot; those flying above are in transit, each with an individual story with joys and tribulations of their own. Though we are miles apart, the passengers in the plane above me connect with me for a brief few minutes.

It makes sense for me to pray these people fly safely to their destination. Someday, someone may look up at a plane I am belted into, and pray for my safety. Or maybe write something down to remember the moment.

We all find our way home eventually, leaving our transient and temporary trails behind us. Surely, that home will be breathtaking and beautiful – and just exactly where we belong.

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These Things We Depend On

barnstormingblog1 Comment

This is the moment when you see again
the red berries of the mountain ash
and in the dark sky
the birds’ night migrations.

It grieves me to think
the dead won’t see them—
these things we depend on,
they disappear.

What will the soul do for solace then?
I tell myself maybe it won’t need
these pleasures anymore;
maybe just not being is simply enough,
hard as that is to imagine.
~Louise Glück “The Night Migrations”

(Louise Glück died yesterday at age 80; she was both a Nobel and Pulitzer Prize winner for poetry)

All through August and September
            thousands, maybe
tens of thousands, of feathered
            creatures pass through
this place and I almost never see
            a single one. The fall
wood warbler migration goes by here
            every year, all of them,
myriad species, all looking sort of like
            each other, yellow, brown, gray,
all muted versions of their summer selves,
            almost indistinguishable
from each other, at least to me, although
            definitely not to each other,
all flying by, mostly at night, calling to each
            other as they go to keep
the flock together, saying: chip, zeet,
            buzz, smack, zip, squeak—
            those
sounds reassuring that we are
            all here together and
heading south, all of us just passing
            through, just passing
through, just passing through, just
            passing through.
~David Budbill “Invisible Visitors” from Tumbling Toward the End

Some feathered travelers slip past us unseen and unheard. 
They may stop for a drink in the pond
or a bite to eat in the field and woods,
but we never know they are there – simply passing through.

Others are compelled to announce their journey
with great fanfare, usually heard before seen. 
The drama of migration becomes bantering conversation
from bird to bird, bird to earth, bird to sun, moon and stars,
with unseen magnetic forces pointing the way.

When not using voices, their wings sing the air
with rhythmic beat and whoosh.

We’re all together here — altogether —
even when our voices are raised sharply,
our silences brooding, our hurts magnified, our sorrows deep.
Our route and mode of travel become a matter of intense debate.

The ultimate destination is not in dispute however. 
It isn’t simply enough to just be,
but to be heading to where we belong,
to that which we depend upon.
We are migrating souls finding a way back home
where all is solace, all is meaning,
all is grace, all is peace.

We’re just passing through,
just passing through, just passing through.

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Landing Home

barnstormingblog4 Comments

I was feeling lonely so
I went outside to the wind
swept yard and beyond
that to the wind-tousled outer
yard and found where last
night in the moonlight we left
two sets of boot prints, when
you stopped on your way
through the darkness to bring a
lemon bar and a movie, and
beside ours the tracks of the
smallest thing with claws, which
must have followed sometime
later. And I chased its tiny prints
and our mud-wash indents to
the far back gate and through
the gate out to where the
land is still dirt and brush
and bushes and cow
pies, my hair pinned
to my head but still blowing,
blowing, and finally a hard
breath, and I could see
through lonely to the wide
open, long blue lines of sunset,
moonlit night, the airplanes trailing
one another
down to tarmac, all those
people landing home.
~Angela Janda “At Quarter to Five” from Small Rooms with Gods.

When I walk out on our farm’s hilly fields, I’ve recently noticed more jets passing overhead than I remember in past years. They aren’t as low as I would expect for take offs and landings from Vancouver (B.C.) International Airport an hour north of us or descending for an approach to SeaTac International 100 miles to the south. They are in mid-flight mode, at least 35,000-45,000 feet above us. So I found a website that shows real-time location of flights all over the world. I can literally stand on our hill looking at a flight overhead while checking my phone to see where it has come from and where it is going. In that way, I feel linked with those people so far above me in that plane, strangers though they be.

Most of these flights are bound for Japan or Korea, coming from the east coast or midwest United States. Apparently these flights are taking a longer circuit over the Pacific Ocean to avoid going too close to Russian air space. They have a long flight ahead as they pass the coastline here in northwest Washington and over Vancouver Island. My husband and I have made that trek over the Pacific to Japan a half dozen times. I can easily imagine myself seated in the economy section, trying to keep my legs from stiffening up over 10+ hours, distracting myself watching movies on the inflight channels.

Instead of having leg cramps, I am here with my dog and farm cat leaving a trail of footprints in a frosty winter field. Above me, a plane leaves a condensation trail which blurs, fades and disappears in the evening light. I stand on a hillside at home, someone living out my days in this spot; those flying above are in transit, each with an individual story of their own. Though we are miles apart, the passengers in the plane connect with me for a brief few minutes.

It makes sense for me to pray for these people I will never meet to fly safely to their destination.

We all find our way home eventually, leaving our transient and temporary trails behind us. Surely, that home will be breathtaking and beautiful – just exactly where we belong.

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Hour of Dawn

barnstormingblog2 Comments

The rising sun had crowned the hills,
            And added beauty to the plain;
O grand and wondrous spectacle!
            That only nature could explain.

I stood within a leafy grove,
            And gazed around in blissful awe;
The sky appeared one mass of blue,
            That seemed to spread from sea to shore.

Far as the human eye could see,
            Were stretched the fields of waving corn.
Soft on my ear the warbling birds
            Were heralding the birth of morn.

While here and there a cottage quaint
            Seemed to repose in quiet ease
Amid the trees, whose leaflets waved
            And fluttered in the passing breeze.

O morning hour! so dear thy joy,
            And how I longed for thee to last;
But e’en thy fading into day
            Brought me an echo of the past.

 ‘Twas this,—how fair my life began;
            How pleasant was its hour of dawn;
But, merging into sorrow’s day,
            Then beauty faded with the morn.
~Olivia Ward Bush-Banks “Morning on Shinnecock”

The heart of a woman goes forth with the dawn,
As a lone bird, soft winging, so restlessly on,
Afar o’er life’s turrets and vales does it roam
In the wake of those echoes the heart calls home.
~Georgia Douglas Johnson from The Heart of a Woman and Other Poems

For what human ill does not dawn seem to be an alleviation?
~Thornton Wilder from The Bridge of San Luis Rey

There are some days, as I look at what tasks lie ahead, when I must fling my heart out ahead of me in the hope before the sun goes down, I might catch up and retrieve it back home to me.

I wonder if anyone else might find it first or even notices it fluttering and stuttering its way through the day.

Perhaps, once flung with the dawn, my heart will wing its way home and I’ll find it patiently waiting for me when I return, readying itself for another journey tomorrow.

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My Heart in Hiding Stirred For a Bird

barnstormingblog5 Comments

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thank you to Kate Steensma of Steensma Dairy for these photos of young kestrel falcons

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I caught this morning morning’s minion, king-
dom of daylight’s dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon, in his riding
Of the rolling level underneath him steady air, and striding
High there, how he rung upon the rein of a wimpling wing
In his ecstasy! then off, off forth on swing,
As a skate’s heel sweeps smooth on a bow-bend: the hurl and gliding
Rebuffed the big wind. My heart in hiding
Stirred for a bird, – the achieve of, the mastery of the thing.

Brute beauty and valour and act, oh, air, pride, plume, here
Buckle! AND the fire that breaks from thee then, a billion
Times told lovelier, more dangerous, O my chevalier!

No wonder of it: shéer plód makes plough down sillion
Shine, and blue-bleak embers, ah my dear,
Fall, gall themselves, and gash gold-vermilion.
~Gerard Manley Hopkins “The Windhover – To Christ Our Lord”

 

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We do indeed hold our hearts in hiding, trying to protect that tender core of who we are from being pierced and shredded by the slings and arrows of every day life.

Yet to live fully as we are created to live, we must fling ourselves into the open, wimpling wings spread, the wind holding us up hovering.

We take our chances, knowing the fall to come.  Our wounds shall be healed, even as they bleed.

There is no wonder of it.  So stirred.

Ah…  Ah, my dear.

 

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steensmakestrel

Breathe Normally

barnstormingblog2 Comments

20130810-210010.jpg
Thunderhead from above over western Washington


There’ll be turbulence. You’ll drop
your book to hold your
water bottle steady. Your
mind, mind has mountains, cliffs of fall
may who ne’er hung there let him
watch the movie. The plane’s
supposed to shudder, shoulder on
like this. It’s built to do that. You’re
designed to tremble too. Else break
Higher you climb, trouble in mind
lungs labor, heights hurl vistas
Oxygen hangs ready
overhead. In the event put on
the child’s mask first. Breathe normally
~Adrienne Rich -from Tonight No Poetry Will Serve, 2011 National Book Award Finalist

We just got off a very turbulent flight from Chicago to Seattle due to thunderstorms much of the way, particularly in the northwest. The brief times when there wasn’t shuddering and bouncing and metal trembling were gifts. I could breathe normally for awhile, not gripping the chair arm, gritting my teeth and silently praying.

I’ve become less and less brave about flying. I know all the statistics about safety but they don’t reassure me in the clinch when hanging at 35,000 feet as if on a thin bungee cord.

Now safely on the ground, I wonder about the next flight, and the next. Like the stomach sinking drops that life can inflict unexpectedly, I know there is nothing to be done but endure what is uncertain. I can’t pedal fast enough to keep a plane in the air so I depend on others who build and maintain and fly planes to do that for me. I can’t prevent bad things from happening in life, but I can depend on the truth that goodness will prevail. I must trust solely in grace given as a gift and never earned.

I must put my oxygen mask on first and breathe normally. Then and only then can I help save others.

20130810-210325.jpg
Mt. Baker from above. Usually we admire it from the ground from our Whatcom County back yard

 

Ready to Hatch

barnstormingblog2 Comments

photo by Josh Scholten

It may be hard for an egg to turn into a bird:
it would be a jolly sight harder for it to learn to fly while remaining an egg.
We are like eggs at present.
And you cannot go on indefinitely being just an ordinary, decent egg.
We must be hatched or go bad.
C. S. Lewis

I revel in being the good egg.
Smooth on the surface,
gooey inside,
ordinary and decent,
indistinguishable from others,
blending in,
not making waves.

It’s not a bad existence staying just as I am.
Except I can no longer.

There appeared a dent or two in my outer shell
from bumps along the way,
and a crack up one side
extending.

It is time to change or rot.

Nothing can be the same again:
the fragments of shell
left behind
abandoned
as useless confinement.

Newly hatched:
home becomes
the wind beneath my wings
to soar a horizon stretching
beyond eternity.