It doesn’t have to be the blue iris, it could be weeds in a vacant lot, or a few small stones; just pay attention, then patch a few words together and don’t try to make them elaborate, this isn’t a contest but the doorway into thanks, and a silence in which another voice may speak. ~Mary Oliver “Blue Iris”
Thou art the Iris, fair among the fairest, Who, armed with golden rod And winged with the celestial azure, bearest The message of some God. ~Henry Wadsworth Longfellow from Flower-de-Luce
To plunge headlong into the heart of a blossom, its amber eyes inscrutably focusing on your own, magnified by a lens of dew. Whose scent, invisible, drowns you in opulence, and for which you can find nothing adequate to say.
You sense that you are loved wholly, yet are quite unable to understand why. But then, you lift your face, creased with the ordinary, to a heaven that is breaking into blue, and find your contentment utterly beyond telling, unspeakable, uncontained. ~Luci Shaw from “Speechless” from Sea Glass
May your blooms be floriferous and in good form, Distinctive, with good substance, flare, and airborne, With standards and falls that endure, never torn. May you display many buds and blooms sublime, In graceful proportion on strong stalks each day, Gently floating above the fans and the fray. May you too reach toward the moon and stars, Bloom after bloom, many seasons in the sun, Enjoying your life, health, and each loved one, Until your living days are artfully done. ~Georgia Gudykunst“An Iris Blessing”
Whenever I allow my eye to peer into an iris, it takes all my attention: I need a flotation device and depth finder. I’m likely to get lost, sweeping and swooning through inner space of tunnels, canyons and corners, coming up for air and diving in again to journey into exotic locales draped in silken hues ~this fairy land on a stem~ Patching a few words together, I’m immersed in the possibilities, blessed by such an impossible blossom.
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This morning the green fists of the peonies are getting ready to break my heart as the sun rises, as the sun strokes them with his old, buttery fingers
and they open — pools of lace, white and pink —
and all day under the shifty wind, as in a dance to the great wedding,
the flowers bend their bright bodies, and tip their fragrance to the air, and rise, their red stems holding
all that dampness and recklessness gladly and lightly, and there it is again — beauty the brave, the exemplary,
blazing open. Do you love this world? Do you cherish your humble and silky life? Do you adore the green grass, with its terror beneath?
Do you also hurry, half-dressed and barefoot, into the garden, and softly, and exclaiming of their dearness, fill your arms with the white and pink flowers,
with their honeyed heaviness, their lush trembling, their eagerness to be wild and perfect for a moment, before they are nothing, forever? ~Mary Oliver fromNew And Selected Poems
The peonies, too heavy with their beauty, slump to the ground. I had hoped they would live forever but ever so slowly day by day they’re becoming the soil of their birth with a faint tang of deliquescence around them. Next June they’ll somehow remember to come alive again, a little trick we have or have not learned. ~Jim Harrison “Peonies” from In Search of Small Gods
Later this month, I will bring our peonies to the graves of those from whom I came, to lay one after another exuberant floral head upon each headstone, a moment of connection between those in the ground and me standing above, acknowledging its thin space when one more humble and silky life shatters, its petals slowly scatter, lush and trembling, to the wind.
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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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And with sighs soaring, soaring síghs deliver Them; beauty-in-the-ghost, deliver it, early now, long before death Give beauty back, beauty, beauty, beauty, back to God, beauty’s self and beauty’s giver. See; not a hair is, not an eyelash, not the least lash lost; every hair Is, hair of the head, numbered. ~Gerard Manley Hopkins from “The Golden Echo”
…writing was one way to let something of lasting value emerge from the pains and fears of my little, quickly passing life. Each time life required me to take a new step into unknown spiritual territory, I felt a deep, inner urge to tell my story to others– Perhaps as a need for companionship but maybe, too, out of an awareness that my deepest vocation is to be a witness to the glimpses of God I have been allowed to catch. ~Henri Nouwenfrom Reaching Out: The Three Movements of the Spiritual Life
“Last forever!” Who hasn’t prayed that prayer? You were lucky to get it in the first place. The present is a freely given canvas. That it is constantly being ripped apart and washed downstream goes without saying. ~Annie Dillard from Pilgrim at Tinker Creek
For too much of my life I have focused on my foreshortening future, bypassing the present in my headlong rush to what lies ahead. There is always a goal to achieve, a conclusion becoming commencement of the next phase, a sunset turning right around in a few hours to become sunrise.
Yet the most precious times occur when the present is so over-whelming, so riveting, so tenderly full of beauty that I believe I can see a brief glimpse of God. I must grab hold with all my strength to try and secret it away and keep it forever. Of course the present still slips away from me, elusive and evasive, torn to bits by the unrelenting movement of time.
Even when I’m able to take a photo to lock it to a page or screen, it is not enough. No matter how I choose to preserve the essence of this moment, it is already passed, ebbing away, never to return.
So I write to harvest those times to make them last a little bit longer although they will inevitably be lost downstream into the ether of unread words.
Where have all the words, all the flowers, all those moments gone?
Even if unread, I am learning that words, which had power in the Beginning to create life itself, still can bring tenderness and meaning back to my life. How blessed to live the gift twice: not just in the moment itself but in recording in words that preserve and treasure it all up, if only for that ephemeral blooming moment.
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I planted the daffodils in early fall, never thinking much about it. Having planted so many fall seasons, one year fell away from another.
During the year, you died. I thought too much of it— all we never did together; it was too late to get more days back.
Sooner or later, grief buried itself deeper and deeper. My heart needed rest. There is a love that tears us to pieces like yellow petals of grief.
And then one day, minding my business, I pass by where the daffodils were. I remembered that you had loved them, and you came back to me.
Do not say second chances are not possible; surely as one daffodil is different than another, each launching silent boats of forgiveness, anything is possible. ~Martin Willitts Jr., “Daffodils in Light – Narcissus Poeticus” from Leave Nothing Behind
Fair Daffodils, we weep to see You haste away so soon; As yet the early-rising sun Has not attain’d his noon.
Stay, stay, Until the hasting day Has run But to the even-song; And, having pray’d together, we Will go with you along. We have short time to stay, as you, We have as short a spring; As quick a growth to meet decay, As you, or anything.
We die As your hours do, and dry Away, Like to the summer’s rain; Or as the pearls of morning’s dew, Ne’er to be found again. ~Robert Herrick “To Daffodils”
Thou yellow trumpeter of laggard Spring! Thou herald of rich Summer’s myriad flowers! The climbing sun with new recovered powers Does warm thee into being, through the ring Of rich, brown earth he woos thee, makes thee fling Thy green shoots up, inheriting the dowers Of bending sky and sudden, sweeping showers, Till ripe and blossoming thou art a thing To make all nature glad, thou art so gay; To fill the lonely with a joy untold; Nodding at every gust of wind to-day, To-morrow jewelled with raindrops. Always bold To stand erect, full in the dazzling play Of April’s sun, for thou hast caught his gold. ~Amy Lowell “To An Early Daffodil”
Our farm was owned by the Lawrence family over one hundred years ago. At some point, perhaps as a remembrance of a loved one who passed, someone decided to bury daffodil bulbs scattered around the yard. All these decades later, dozens of faithful heralds of spring still come up as the sun and extra hours of light call them forth. Some years they bloom in February, but most typically they wait for a more predictable welcome from the weather in March.
They are very tender, easily injured by a strong wind, heavy rain or hailstorm or late snowfall – mostly an old antique variety of fluffy double blooms, but some traditional trumpet blossoms still come up called forth by the calling of the geese and swans passing over far above them.
For me, their blooming with abandon is a reminder of faithfulness and persistence, especially because of the 44 weeks per year they remain silent and buried out of sight. I have a general sense where they will appear each February, but am still surprised and impressed when they do push up through the icy ground. I walk around them carefully, knowing I could crush them with one firm inadvertent boot step if I am not cautious.
Once the daffodils are blooming, they encourage my hope that anything is possible: a promise of the spring just ahead. When the blooms wither and fade, the green spiky stems must gather the strength the bulb needs for another cycle of dormancy, so I mow around them to allow as much time as needed to replenish before disappearing underground again.
I still don’t understand how these gentle blooms somehow manage to pull me down with them into the bulb, waiting my turn alongside them buried deep in the dark. Perhaps it is because God plants each one of us here in His holy ground, to await the ultimate wakening that calls us forth to bloom everlasting.
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Spring comes quickly: overnight the plum tree blossoms, the warm air fills with bird calls.
In the plowed dirt, someone has drawn a picture of the sun with rays coming out all around but because the background is dirt, the sun is black. There is no signature.
Alas, very soon everything will disappear: the bird calls, the delicate blossoms. In the end, even the earth itself will follow the artist’s name into oblivion.
Nevertheless, the artist intends a mood of celebration.
How beautiful the blossoms are — emblems of the resilience of life. The birds approach eagerly. ~Louise Glück “Primavera”
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”
And he who was seated on the throne said, “Behold, I am making all things new.” Also he said, ‘Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true. ” Revelation 21:5
Given a choice, humanity chose sour over the sweetness we were created for ~ giving up walks together in the cool of the day to feed an appetite that could never be sated.
God made a choice to bring 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 choose to believe earth can be sweet and beautiful again. Each spring becomes a celebration of our resilience.
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It’s so easy to look and see what we pass through in this world, but we don’t. If you’re like me, you see so little. You see what you expect to see rather than what’s there. ~Frederick Buechner from The Remarkable Ordinary
Jesus said to them, “Come and have breakfast.” None of the disciples dared ask him, “Who are you?” They knew it was the Lord. John 21:12
It is too easy, by the next day, to let go of Easter — to slide back into the Monday routine, managing our best to get through each day, our jaws set, our teeth gritted, as we have before.
We are blinded by our grief, shivering in misery, thinking Him only the Gardener as He passed by. We don’t pay attention to Who is right before us, Who is always tending us: the new Adam, caring for a world desperate for rescue.
God knows this about us. So He invites us to breakfast on Monday and every day thereafter.
He feeds us, a tangible and meaningful act of nourishing us in our most basic human needs though we’ve done nothing to deserve the gift. He cooks up fish on a beach at dawn and welcomes us to join Him, as if nothing extraordinary has just happened.
Just yesterday evening he reviewed His Word and broke bread in Emmaus, opening the eyes and hearts of those like us who failed to see Who this is walking beside them.
This is no ordinary Gardener.
When He offers up a meal of His Word, the gift is nothing less than Himself.
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I know a bleeding-heart plant that has thrived for sixty years if not more, and has never missed a spring without rising and spreading itself into a glossy bush, with many small red hearts dangling. Don’t you think that deserves a little thought? The woman who planted it has been gone for a long time, and everyone who saw it in that time has also died or moved away and so, like so many stories, this one can’t get finished properly. Most things that are important, have you noticed, lack a certain neatness. More delicious, anyway, is to remember my grandmother’s pleasure when the dissolve of winter was over and the green knobs appeared and began to rise, and to cre- ate their many hearts. One would say she was a simple woman, made happy by simple things. I think this was true. And more than once, in my long life, I have wished to be her. ~Mary Oliver “The Bleeding-Heart”from New and Selected Poems Volume Two
My Grandma Kittie grew flowers–lots of them. Her garden stretched along both sides of the sidewalk to her old two story farm house, in window boxes and beds around the perimeter, in little islands scattered about the yard anchored by a tree, or a piece of driftwood, a gold fish pond or a large rock. Wisteria hung like a thick curtain of purple braids from the roof of her chicken coop, and her greenhouse, far bigger than her home, smelled moist and mossy with hanging fuschia baskets. For her it was full time joy disguised as a job: she sold seedlings, and ready-to-display baskets, and fresh flower arrangements.
She often said she was sure heaven would be full of flowers needing tending, and she was just practicing for the day when she could make herself useful as a gardener for God.
Visiting Grandma meant spending summer evenings in her yard heavy with wafting flower perfume. She especially loved her bleeding hearts bushes that returned every spring, dripping their red blossoms over her unruly lawn.
Another of her favorite flowers was the evening primrose. It was one of a few night blooming plants meant to attract pollinating moths. Its tall stems were adorned by lance shaped leaves, with multiple buds and blooms per stem. Each evening, and it was possible to set one’s watch by its punctuality, only one green wrapped bud per stem would open, revealing a bright yellow blossom with four delicate veined petals, a rosette of stamens and a cross-shaped stigma in the center, rising far above the blossom. The yellow was so vivid and lively, it seemed almost like a drop of sun had been left on earth to light the night. By morning, the bloom would begin to wither and wilt under the real sunlight, somehow overcome with the brightness, and would blush a pinkish orange as it folded upon itself, ready to die and drop from the plant in only a day or two, leaving a bulging seed pod behind.
I would settle down on the damp lawn at twilight, usually right before dusk fell, to watch the choreography of opening of blossoms on stem after stem of evening primrose. Whatever the trigger was for the process of unfolding, there would be a sudden loosening of the protective green calyces, in an almost audible release. Then over the course of about a minute, the overlapping yellow petals would unfurl, slowly, gently, purposefully, revealing their pollen treasure trove inside. It was like watching time lapse cinematography, only this was an accelerated, real time flourish of beauty, happening right before my eyes. I always felt privileged to witness each unveiling as Grandma liked to remind me that few flowers ever allowed us to behold both their birth and death. The evening primrose was not at all shy about sharing itself and it would enhance the show with a sweet lingering fragrance.
Grandma knew how much I enjoyed the evening primrose display, so she saved seeds from the seed pods for me, and helped me plant them at our house during one of her spring time visits. I remember scattering the seeds with her in a specially chosen spot, in anticipation of the “drops of sun” that would grace our yard come summertime. However, Grandma was more tired than usual on this particular visit, taking naps and not as eager to go for walks or eat the special meals cooked in honor of her visit. Her usually resonant laughing brown eyes appeared dull, almost muddy.
The day she was to return to her home, she came into the kitchen at breakfast time, wearily setting down her packed bags. She gave me a hug and I looked at her. Something was dreadfully wrong. Grandma’s eyes were turning yellow.
Instead of returning home that day, she went to the hospital. Within a day, she had surgery and within two days, was told she had terminal pancreatic cancer. She did not last long, her skin becoming more jaundiced by the day, her eyes more icteric and far away. She soon left her earthly gardens to cultivate those in heaven.
I’ve kept bleeding hearts and evening primrose in my garden ever since. Grandma’s heart dangles from the bushes and she is released from each primrose bloom as it unfolds precipitously in the evening. She wafts across the yard in its perfume. Her spirit, a drop of sun coming to rest, luminous, for a brief stay upon the earth, only to fall before we’re ready to let it go. But as the wilted bloom lets go, its seeds have already begun to form.
I’m sure Grandma is still growing flowers. And my soil-covered hands look more like hers every day.
The grass withers and the flowers fall, because the breath of the Lord blows on them. Surely the people are grass. The grass withers and the flowers fall, but the word of our God endures forever. Isaiah 40: 7-8
This Lenten season I reflect on the words of the 19th century southern spiritual hymn “What Wondrous Love is This”
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This morning’s sun is not the honey light of summer, thick with golden dust and slow as syrup pouring from a jug. It’s bright, but thin and cold, and slanted steep and low across the hillsides. Frost is blooming white, these flowers forced by icy winds that blow as hard this morning as they blew all night. Too cold for rain, but far too dry for snow.
And I am restless, pacing to and fro enduring winter’s grip that holds us tight. But my camellias, which somehow know what weather to expect—they’re always right— have broken bud. Now scarlet petals glow outside the window where I sit and write. ~Tiel Aisha Ansari “Camellias” from Dervish Lions
Near a shrine in Japan he’d swept the path and then placed camellia blossoms there.
Or — we had no way of knowing — he’d swept the path between fallen camellias. ~Carol Snow “Tour”
Camellia and crocus blossoms are hardy enough to withstand our current low temperatures, defying freezing winds and hard frosts with their resilience.
Inevitably, their petals eventually will begin to brown at the edges and wither.
On windy days, the full camellia blooms plop to the ground without warning, scattering about like a nubby floral throw rug. They are too bulky to step on, so the tendency is to pick a path around them, allowing them the dignity of a few more days before being swept off the sidewalks.
These fallen winter blossoms become almost sacred, gracing the paths the living still must navigate. They are indeed grounding for the passersby, a reminder that our time to let go will soon come too. As we restlessly pursue our days and measure our steps, we try to carefully make our way around their fading beauty.
As a reminder to us, there is an unexpected blessing bestowed in their budding, in their blooming, in their ebbing away.
Mortals, born of woman, are of few days and full of trouble. They spring up like flowers and wither away; like fleeting shadows, they do not endure. Do you fix your eye on them? Job 14: 1-3
The grass withers and the flowers fall, because the breath of the Lord blows on them. Surely the people are grass. The grass withers and the flowers fall, but the word of our God endures forever. Isaiah 40:7-8
This Lenten season I reflect on the words of the 19th century southern spiritual hymn “What Wondrous Love is This”
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March. I am beginning to anticipate a thaw. Early mornings the earth, old unbeliever, is still crusted with frost where the moles have nosed up their cold castings, and the ground cover in shadow under the cedars hasn’t softened for months, fogs layering their slow, complicated ice around foliage and stem night by night,
but as the light lengthens, preacher of good news, evangelizing leaves and branches, his large gestures beckon green out of gray. Pinpricks of coral bursting from the cotoneasters. A single bee finding the white heather. Eager lemon-yellow aconites glowing, low to the ground like little uplifted faces. A crocus shooting up a purple hand here, there, as I stand on my doorstep, my own face drinking in heat and light like a bud welcoming resurrection, and my hand up, too, ready to sign on for conversion. ~Luci Shaw “Revival” from What the Light was Like
The earth invalid, dropsied, bruised, wheeled Out in the sun, After frightful operation. She lies back, wounds undressed to the sun, To be healed, Sheltered from the sneapy chill creeping North wind, Leans back, eyes closed, exhausted, smiling Into the sun. Perhaps dozing a little. While we sit, and smile, and wait, and know She is not going to die. ~Ted Hughes from ” A March Morning Unlike Others” from Ted Hughes. Collected Poems
Spring is emerging slowly from this haggard and droopy winter. All growing things are still stuck in morning frost for another week at least. Then, like the old “Wizard of Oz” movie, the landscape will suddenly turn from monochrome to technicolor, the soundtrack from forlorn to glorious birdsong.
Yearning for spring to commence, I tap my foot impatiently as if owed a timely seasonal transformation from dormant to verdant. We all have been waiting for the Physician’s announcement that this patient survived some intricate life-changing procedure: “I’m happy to say the Earth is alive after all, now revived and restored, wounded but healing, breathing on her own but too sedated for a visit just yet.”
I wait impatiently to celebrate her return to health, knowing this temporary home of ours is still very much alive. She breathes, she thrives, blooming and singing with everything she’s got. And so will I.
He sends his command to the earth; his word runs swiftly. 16 He spreads the snow like wool and scatters the frost like ashes. 17 He hurls down his hail like pebbles. Who can withstand his icy blast? 18 He sends his word and melts them; he stirs up his breezes, and the waters flow. Psalm 147: 15-18
This Lenten season I reflect on the words of the 19th century southern spiritual hymn “What Wondrous Love is This”
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