Who made the world?
I don’t know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
With your one wild and precious life?
~Mary Oliver from “The Summer Day”
It is at such moments I
am called, in a voice so pure
I have to close my eyes, and enter
the breathing darkness just beyond
my headlights. I have come back,
I think, to something I had
almost forgotten, a mouth
that waits patiently, sighs, speaks,
and falls silent. No one else
is alive. The blossoms are
white, and I am almost there.
~Robert Mezey from “White Blossoms”
You love the roses – so do I. I wish
The sky would rain down roses, as they rain
From off the shaken bush. Why will it not?
Then all the valley would be pink and white
And soft to tread on. They would fall as light
As feathers, smelling sweet; and it would be
Like sleeping and like waking, all at once!
~George Eliot
…And moments that should each last forever
Slide unconsciously by us like water.
~Kenneth Rexroth from “Another Spring”
Just as we lose hope
she ambles in,
a late guest
dragging her hem
of wildflowers,
her torn
veil of mist,
of light rain,
blowing
her dandelion
breath
in our ears;
and we forgive her,
turning from
chilly winter
ways,
we throw off
our faithful
sweaters
and open
our arms.
~Linda Pastan “Spring”
Yellow is the color of the sun
The feeling of fun
A duck’s bill
A canary bird
And a daffodil
Yellow’s sweet corn
Ripe oats
Hummingbirds’ little throats
Summer squash and Chinese silk
The cream on top of Jersey milk
Dandelions and Daisy hearts
Custard pies and lemon tarts.
Yellow blinks on summer nights
In the off-and-on of firefly lights.
Yellow’s a topaz,
A candle flame
Felicity’s a yellow name.
Yellow’s mimosa,
And I guess,
Yellow’s the color of…
Happiness!
~Mary O’Neill from Hailstones and Halibut Bones
A look around the farm and nearby to find our spring
…To be sure, it feels wintry enough still:
but often in the very early spring it feels like that.
Two thousand years are only a day or two by this scale.
A man really ought to say,
‘The Resurrection happened two thousand years ago’
in the same spirit in which he says ‘I saw a crocus yesterday.’
Because we know what is coming behind the crocus.
The spring comes slowly down this way;
but the great thing is that the corner has been turned.
There is, of course, this difference that in the natural spring
the crocus cannot choose whether it will respond or not.
We can.
We have the power either of withstanding the spring,
and sinking back into the cosmic winter, or of going on …
to which He is calling us.
It remains with us to follow or not,
to die in this winter,
or to go on into that spring and that summer.
~C.S. Lewis–in The Grand Miracle, God in the Dock
Whether mid-winter or early autumn
the crocus are unexpected,
surprising even to the observant.
Hidden potential beneath the surface,
an incubation readily triggered
by advancing or retreating light from above.
Waiting with temerity,
to be called forth from earthly grime
and granted reprieve from indefinite interment.
A luminous gift of hope and beauty
borne from a humble bulb;
so plain and only dirt adorned.
Summoned, the deep lavender harbinger rises
from sleeping frosted ground in February
or spent topsoil, exhausted in October.
These bold blossoms do not pause
for snow and ice nor hesitate to pierce through
a musty carpet of fallen leaves.
They break free to surge skyward
cloaked in tightly bound brilliance,
spaced strategically to be deployed against the darkness.
Slowly unfurling, the violet petals peel to reveal golden crowns,
royally renouncing the chill of winter’s beginning and end,
staying brazenly alive when little else is.
In the end, they painfully wilt, deeply bruised and purple
under the Sun’s reflection made manifest;
returning defeated, inglorious, fallen, to dust.
They will rise yet again.
What a pity flowers can utter no sound! —A singing rose, a whispering violet, a murmuring honeysuckle… on, what a rare and exquisite miracle would these be!
~Henry Ward Beecher
(Nate’s photos were taken at Kinchaku-da Gardens and Shinjuku Gyoen in Japan)
(pansies pictured are above Bellingham Bay on the Performing Arts Center Plaza at Western Washington University)
Nobody can keep on being angry if she looks into the heart of a pansy for a little while.
~L.M. Montgomery
The world is in sore need of a cure for the grumbles.
Fortunately, it exists right outside in our back yards, along sidewalks and in vacant lots.
A cheerful face is irresistible to all but the crabbiest among us, guaranteed to bring a smile every time.
Beyond the obvious charm exists a depth of heart — roots able to thrive in the thinnest of soil, at home among rocks and weeds, resilient even when tromped on.
We carry its seeds on the tread of our boots in spite of our grumbling and help spread the good news: anger left unfed will dry up and blow away.
Yet the constant heart of the pansy will last. It smiles back.
Barnstorming 