Tag: Flowers

From Joy to Joy to Joy

barnstormingblog1 Comment

buttercup915

rainyrose

There are days we live
as if death were nowhere
in the background; from joy
to joy to joy, from wing to wing,
from blossom to blossom to
impossible blossom, to sweet impossible blossom.
~Li-Young Lee from “From Blossoms”
variegatedazalea
buttercupfade
 chestnutblooms5116
These are impossible evenings of color and cool breezes.
A sense of immortality extends across the sky as far as the eye can see.
Impossible — because I know they won’t last; this precious time is ephemeral.
Still I revel in it,
moving from joy to joy to joy,
from buttercup to buttercup,
lifted up like petals loosened
and set down gently,
oh so gently,
to rest in the sweetness of line-dried sheets
that promise spring someday will last forever.
sunset52216
dandysunset51165
clothesline

Teardrops in Our Eyes

barnstormingblog3 Comments

wwuazalea514153

wwuazalea51216

wwuazalea514156

Some things are very dear to me–
Such things as flowers bathed by rain
Or patterns traced upon the sea
Or crocuses where snow has lain . . .
The iridescence of a gem,
The moon’s cool opalescent light,
Azaleas and the scent of them,
And honeysuckles in the night.
And many sounds are also dear–
Like winds that sing among the trees
Or crickets calling from the weir
Or Negroes humming melodies.
But dearer far than all surmise

Are sudden tear-drops in your eyes
~Gwendolyn Bennett — Sonnet 2

We human beings do real harm.
History could make a stone weep.
~Marilynne Robinson–Gilead

 

 

Created with the freedom to choose our own way, we tend to opt for the path of least resistance with the highest pay back. Hey, after all, we’re human and that’s our excuse and we’re sticking to it.

No road less traveled for most of us–instead we blindly head down the superhighway of what’s best for number one, no matter what the means of transportation, what it costs to get there, how seedy the billboards or how many warning signs appear, or where the ultimate destination takes us.

History is full of the piled-high wrecking yards of demolition remnants from crashes along the way.

It’s enough to make a stone weep and so we weep aplenty.
Certainly God wept and probably still does as we are very dear to Him.

He knew what He was doing and thought it good at the time.  Perhaps it still might be.

 

wwuazalea514158
yellowazalea
variegatedazalea

Contentment Beyond Telling

barnstormingblog1 Comment

irisdepth

sunsetdandy51166

13173153_1290213661007944_8371190478800636920_o
“Last Light” photo of Twin Sisters at dusk by Joel DeWaard

How wonderful it was to love something
without the compromise of language.
~Jim Harrison

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.

Words stumble, cheapen, like when you try
and fail to describe to someone what
yesterday’s shadows looked like, racing
over the five layers of far hills, or how
the mountain stream muttered its way
between valley stones.

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 “Speechless” from her new collection Sea Glass

irispetal

wwupinks13

fuschia1

Although it doesn’t always take words to know
how deeply we love,
and are loved,
the Word is love
personified,
embodied,
bloodied,
unforgettable.

peony42816

thesisters2

The Humblest Things

barnstormingblog3 Comments

chestnutbloom1

dandy430164

The power of finding beauty in the humblest things makes home happy and life lovely.
~Louisa May Alcott

walnutowl

And as you sit on the hillside, or lie prone under the trees of the forest, or sprawl wet-legged on the shingly beach of a mountain stream, the great door, that does not look like a door, opens.
~Stephen Graham from The Gentle Art of Tramping

That great door opens on the present, illuminates it as with a multitude of flashing torches.
~Annie Dillard (in response to the above quote) from Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

tjoelkerbarn

leaningtree

mushrooms103115

Ever since I started noticing
how beautiful are the most humble things
and the most humble people,
I realized the great door opened to me
is the door of my own home
and my own happiness.
I need go no further than my own back yard.

wwupinks1

willow9

The Secret Hallowing

barnstormingblog3 Comments

peony428162

dogwood42816

rhody4281

This fevers me, this sun on green,
On grass glowing, this young spring.
The secret hallowing is come,
Regenerate sudden incarnation,
Mystery made visible
In growth, yet subtly veiled in all,
Ununderstandable in grass,
In flowers, and in the human heart,
This lyric mortal loveliness,
The earth breathing, and the sun…
~Richard Eberhart from “This Fevers Me”

rows

rays

 

The headlong rush into spring
in mere weeks
when grass grows a foot in a week
and buds that appear gently expectant
explode with color-
this is a hallowing of life
lying dormant over long winter months.

It is beyond my understanding
beyond my imagining
beyond being left breathless by the transformation,
each fevered breath
that could be,
but isn’t,
my last.

 

unfurl

chestnut42816

peony428161

White Flames of Trillium

barnstormingblog2 Comments

trilliumweeping

moss118162

I wished to wade in the trillium
and be warmed near the white flames.
I imagined the arch of my foot
massaged by the mosses.
This field immersed in gravity
defying growth.  Green and glorious.
It let me know that out of the
soil came I, and green I shall be.
Whether an unnamed weed or a
wild strawberry I will join in
the hymn.
~Luci Shaw from “Spring Song, Very Early Morning”

 

After a few days away from the farm, enriched by the contact with like-minded people of faith and words, I am longing to return to the land of moss and trillium, of green grass that overwhelms.

I am of the soil, dust to dust am I.   Created, celebrated, centered on the joy of returning where I belong.

trilliumheart

 

drizzlemoss

April Strewing Flowers

barnstormingblog3 Comments

wwunotpink

skagitfields932516

primula5
To what purpose, April, do you return again?
Beauty is not enough.
You can no longer quiet me with the redness
Of little leaves opening stickily.
I know what I know.
The sun is hot on my neck as I observe
The spikes of the crocus.
The smell of the earth is good.
It is apparent that there is no death.
But what does that signify?
Not only under ground are the brains of men
Eaten by maggots.
Life in itself
Is nothing,
An empty cup, a flight of uncarpeted stairs.
It is not enough that yearly, down this hill,
April
Comes like an idiot, babbling and strewing flowers.

–  Edna St. Vincent Millay, “Spring”

wwupinks6

wwupinks8

 

skagitfields32516

I know that we cannot depend on the return of Spring to heal us~
it is balm not cure,
our brains losing synapses day by day.

I know that none of Spring’s beauty can bloom without a dying before~
it is a shroud thrown over to cover our decay.

I know I cannot be transformed simply by the warmth of the sun~
it is not enough for my skin to sweat when my heart lies still and cold.

I know I must dig deeper into holy ground for the truth~
it does not lie in perfumed blossoms and sweet blue skies.

I know what I know~
life in itself is nothing unless
death is overcome yet again
and our hearts, once broken,
healed again and again,
begin to pulse red once more.

skagitfields332516

peonyheart2

tulipred

A Continual State of Surprise

barnstormingblog7 Comments

maplebuds16

springdandelion

lichen12316

mushrooms1031152

So strange, life is. 
Why people do not go around
in a continual state of surprise
is beyond me.
~William Maxwell

wwupinks3

shaggymanerain1

grapehyacinth316

If I stop and really look at something I usually pass by with only a cursory glance, I am astonished at what I didn’t notice before.

Inside and up close is an unfamiliar richness and strangeness, as if of a foreign world.  I might miss seeing it altogether if I didn’t find the time to be surprised by life.

It is beyond me how much is beyond me.
It is all beyond me.

mosswalk

pansyface5

willow4

walnutowl2

Between Midnight and Dawn: Beginning to Anticipate

barnstormingblog2 Comments

drizzlemoss3

dilly6

quince2161

 

…in keeping with his promise we are looking forward to a new heaven and a new earth, where righteousness dwells. So then, dear friends, since you are looking forward to this, make every effort to be found spotless, blameless and at peace with him. 15 Bear in mind that our Lord’s patience means salvation.
2 Peter 3: 13-15

 

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”

 

Are we to look at cherry blossoms only in full bloom,
the moon only when it is cloudless? 
To long for the moon while looking on the rain,
to lower the blinds and be unaware
of the passing of the spring –
these are even more deeply moving. 
Branches about to blossom
or gardens strewn with flowers
are worthier of our admiration.
~Yoshida Kenko

morningsky3416

I know this longing, this anticipation, as I know my own back yard:
waiting for a view of the mountain from my kitchen window

There are more days its snowy peak is hidden
than days it is blossom-stark floating cloud-like above the horizon of our barn roof

Visitors to the farm are too often told “the mountain is right there”~~~
as I point to a bank of nondescript gray clouds

My loving and longing for it, my knowing it is always there, in hiding,
moves me more than the days it is simply given to me.

The beauty of anticipation,
confident of fulfillment to come
my thirstiness
to be slaked
my hunger to be
satisfied.

drizzlemoss2

fallcrocus

wlccroci

 

During this Lenten season, I will be drawing inspiration from the new devotional collection edited by Sarah Arthur —Between Midnight and Dawn

Between Midnight and Dawn: No Flower Can Wither

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 skagitwillow

daff20162

For you have been born again, not of perishable seed, but of imperishable, through the living and enduring word of God.  For,

“All people are like grass,
    and all their glory is like the flowers of the field;
the grass withers and the flowers fall,
    but the word of the Lord endures forever.”

And this is the word that was preached to you.
1 Peter 1:23-25

 conwaychurch1

How fresh, oh Lord, how sweet and clean
Are thy returns! even as the flowers in spring;
         To which, besides their own demean,
The late-past frosts tributes of pleasure bring.
                      Grief melts away
                      Like snow in May,

         As if there were no such cold thing.

         Who would have thought my shriveled heart
Could have recovered greenness? It was gone
         Quite underground; as flowers depart
To see their mother-root, when they have blown,
                      Where they together
                      All the hard weather,
         Dead to the world, keep house unknown.
         These are thy wonders, Lord of power,
Killing and quickening, bringing down to hell
         And up to heaven in an hour;

Making a chiming of a passing-bell.

                      We say amiss
                      This or that is:
         Thy word is all, if we could spell.
         Oh that I once past changing were,
Fast in thy Paradise, where no flower can wither!
         Many a spring I shoot up fair,
Offering at heaven, growing and groaning thither;

         And now in age I bud again,
After so many deaths I live and write;
         I once more smell the dew and rain,
And relish versing. Oh, my only light,
                      It cannot be
                      That I am he
         On whom thy tempests fell all night.
         These are thy wonders, Lord of love,
To make us see we are but flowers that glide;
         Which when we once can find and prove,
Thou hast a garden for us where to bide;
                      Who would be more,
                      Swelling through store,
         Forfeit their Paradise by their pride.
~George Herbert “The Flower”

 

drizzlecrocus
primula2

As they are meant to do,
the crocuses creep skyward,
snowdrops flourish,
the orchard tree buds swell
daffodil bulbs awaken bright from their autumn burial.

Bird song is plentiful again in the gray and frozen mornings
and frogs’ chorus rejoices again in the evenings.

There will be spring again in only a few short weeks,
despite how dark things feel now.
Exhaustion will be replaced by renewal
and fresh air filled with the sweetness of cherry and apple blossoms.

Our fields will grow lush and soft
with the sun warm on our horses’ withers.

It isn’t enough to celebrate the defeat of winter
by blooming where we are planted;
may we be forever past changing
by never withering again.

skagitflats516
During this Lenten season, I will be drawing inspiration from the new devotional collection edited by Sarah Arthur —Between Midnight and Dawn