Tag: fresh

A Task to Labor At

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How much better it is
to carry wood to the fire
than to moan about your life.
How much better
to throw the garbage
onto the compost, or to pin the clean
sheet on the line,
With a gray-brown wooden clothes pin.
~Jane Kenyon “The Clothespin”

Queen of my tub, I merrily sing,
While the white foam rises high,
And sturdily wash, and rinse, and wring,
And fasten the clothes to dry;
Then out in the free fresh air they swing,
Under the sunny sky.

I wish we could wash from our hearts and our souls
The stains of the week away,
And let water and air by their magic make
Ourselves as pure as they;
Then on the earth there would be indeed
A glorious washing-day!

Along the path of a useful life
Will heart’s-ease ever bloom;
The busy mind has no time to think
Of sorrow, or care, or gloom;
And anxious thoughts may be swept away
As we busily wield a broom.

I am glad a task to me is given
To labor at day by day;
For it brings me health, and strength, and hope,
And I cheerfully learn to say,—
“Head, you may think; heart, you may feel;
But hand, you shall work alway!”
~Louisa May Alcott “A Song from the Suds”

Silken web undulates,
a lady’s private wash
upon the wind.
~L.L. Barkat

All day the blanket snapped and swelled
on the line, roused by a hot spring wind….
From there it witnessed the first sparrow,
early flies lifting their sticky feet,
and a green haze on the south-sloping hills.
Clouds rose over the mountain….At dusk
I took the blanket in, and we slept,
restless, under its fragrant weight.
~Jane Kenyon “Wash”

We have a clothesline that I use several times a week to take advantage of sunlight, breezes, fresh air fragrance – all at no cost but the time it takes to carry laundry outside, hang it up with my ancient clothespins, and then pull it back down at the end of the day.

It is well worth the effort; I have been fortunate to always live where there is a line and clothespins.

This morning, I found someone had been very busy during the night, securing the clothespins to the line to make sure the pins could not escape. Each pin and hinge were laced to the line with silken threads clinging tightly, just in case a pin might consider escaping.

I looked for this industrious spider, as it had trekked down a long line, working its webby magic through numerous clothespins, yet it had descended and snuck away on this foggy Labor Day, not even waiting to see what might happen to all its work.

The old and weathered clothespins patiently wait for their next job, to pinch together what I give them to hold on to tomorrow while blowing in the wind. In the meantime, they cling to fresh life, gaily festooned with gossamer silk.

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Like a Mist Drying

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Morning glories, pale as a mist drying,
fade from the heat of the day, but already
hunchback bees in pirate pants and with peg-leg
hooks have found and are boarding them.

This could do for the sack of the imaginary
fleet. The raiders loot the galleons even as they
one by one vanish and leave still real
only what has been snatched out of the spell.

I’ve never seen bees more purposeful except
when the hive is threatened. They know
the good of it must be grabbed and hauled
before the whole feast wisps off.

They swarm in light and, fast, dive in,
then drone out, slow, their pantaloons heavy
with gold and sunlight. The line of them,
like thin smoke, wafts over the hedge.

And back again to find the fleet gone.
Well, they got this day’s good of it. Off
they cruise to what stays open longer.
Nothing green gives honey. And by now

you’d have to look twice to see more than green
where all those white sails trembled
when the world was misty and open
and the prize was there to be taken.
~John Ciardi “Bees and Morning Glories” from The Collected Poems of John Ciardi.

Happiness is like a morning glory:
yesterday’s won’t bloom again;
tomorrow’s hasn’t opened yet.
Only today’s flower can be enjoyed today.
Be happy this very moment,
and you’ll learn how to be happy always.
~ Goswami Kriyananda

I am alive — I guess —
The Branches on my Hand
Are full of Morning Glory —
~Emily Dickinson

Now I’m at seventy,
no longer defined by ambition or career,
I open up misty every morning with a new bloom,
aware what I’ve left undone before wilting away.

A daily unfurling is a chance to:
Start afresh.
Welcome visitors.
Hold hearts gently.
Hum as I walk.
Sometimes just sit in awed silence.
Watch out the window.
Feed those who look hungry.

Each new opening, each new day,
so to leave a little less left undone.

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Licked Clean of Fog

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At first she sees the fog as a shroud
settling over the fields of beans, but
she does not wish to start this day
with such a word. She could say the fog
is like muslin stretched over the mouth
of a jelly jar, or it could be like
the birth caul covering a newborn calf
before its mother licks it clean.
It could be like the clouds
in the calico’s old eyes—
no, not that. Let it be the caul.
The bean fields, like a baby calf,
are born again this morning,
and the sun will lick them clean.
~Lonnie Hull DuPont, “At first she sees the fog…” from She Calls the Moon by Its Name

This is an interesting comparison of the “bags” we find ourselves in at the very beginning and ending of life.

Evening fog often acts like a shroud, cloudy, murky and blinding. It muffles sound and stifles light and feels like walking in a gray sponge that sucks our breath and life.

On the other hand, morning fog appears on the wane, fading away while torn apart by the rising sun’s rays and warmth. It is discarded as it dissipates. The world emerges fresh, its surface clean and drying.

I would rather strive to break free of a covering caul than immobilized in a smothering shroud. Each morning, I am born into a fresh start with new and clearer vision.

I too have been licked clean.

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The Quivering Air of October

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I remember it
as October days are always remembered,
cloudless, maple-flavored,
the air gold and so clean it quivers.
~Leif Enger in Peace Like a River

I’m not someone who switches to pumpkin-spice-flavored anything in October.

No need, no need.
The air itself tastes like autumn, quivering on my tongue.

Instead I revel in the gold and bronze tint to the sky,
the cinnamon nutmeg dusting of the trees,
the heavy sprinkling of hanging dew drops,
the crisp and shivery breezes.

Soon the ground will be frost instead of dust
and leaves a crunchy carpet rather than shady veil.

October is a much-needed change,
keeping us fresh,
reminding us to breathe deeply when life feels shallow,
and remembering we have been immersed
in the pumpkin-spice of a new day we have never lived before.

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Bathed in Beauty

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We do not want merely to see beauty…
we want something else which can hardly be put into words-
to be united with the beauty we see,
to pass into it,
to receive it into ourselves,
to bathe in it,
to become part of it.

We discern the freshness and purity of morning,
but they do not make us fresh and pure.
We cannot mingle with the splendours we see.

But all the leaves of the New Testament
are rustling with the rumour
that it will not always be so.

Someday, God willing, we shall get in.
~C.S. Lewis from The Weight of Glory

We are wounded by the grime of this world, no question about it. Just one look at the headlines shows how tainted and sullied we’ve become, so long separated from the beauty and perfection for which we were created.

The wounds we bear are from beauty banished when we desperately wish to bathe in it. We’re offered just such a cleansing when we offer up our soiled selves.

Come on in, the water is fine.

He Does Not Leave Us Where We Are: A Bud on Dead Wood

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I am a breath
Of fresh air for you, a change
By and by.

Black March I call him
Because of his eyes
Being like March raindrops
On black twigs.

But this friend
Whatever new names I give him
Is an old friend. He says:

Whatever names you give me
I am
A breath of fresh air,
A change for you.
~Stevie Smith from “Black March”

Suddenly, in the last week, buds are forming everywhere.

From seemingly dead wood
that stands cold and dormant in late March,
comes new life, returning like an old friend.

Transforming what seems lifeless,
as if fresh air has been breathed into a corpse.

What could be more lifeless than a cross piece of timbers
built specifically for execution?

Yet life sprung from that death tree,
an unexpected and glorious bud,
ready to burst into most fragrant blossom.

God sees us as we are,
loves us as we are,
and accepts us as we are.
But by His grace,
He does not leave us where we are.
~Tim Keller

O Deus, ego amo te,
O God I love Thee for Thyself
Nec amo te ut salves me,
and not that I may heaven gain
Nec quod qui te non diligent,
nor yet that they who love Thee not
Æterno igne pereunt.
must suffer hell’s eternal pain.

Ex cruces lingo germinat,
Out of the bud of the wood of the Cross
Qui pectus amor occupant,
wherefore hearts’ love embraces
Ex pansis unde brachiis,
whence out of extended arms
Ad te amandum arripes. Amen.
you lovingly take us. Amen.
~Prayer of St. Francis Xavier  “O Deus Ego Amo Te” 18th Century Traditional

What Gift Shall I Bring?

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Seven-thirty. Driving northwest out of town,
the snowscape dusky, sky tinted smoky peach.
In the rear view mirror, a bright orange glow
suffuses the stubbly treeline. Suddenly a column
of brightness shoots from the horizon,
a pillar of fire! One eye on the road,
I watch behind me the head of a golden
child begin to push up between the black knees
of the hills. Two weeks out from Solstice, the sun
so near winter it seems to rise in the south.
A fiery angel stands over his cradle of branches.
And what strange travelers come to honor him?
And what gift will I bring to him this day?
~Thomas Smith “Advent Dawn” from The Glory. 

In trees still dripping night some nameless birds
Woke, shook out their arrowy wings, and sang,
Slowly, like finches sifting through a dream.
The pink sun fell, like glass, into the fields.
Two chestnuts, and a dapple gray,
Their shoulders wet with light, their dark hair streaming,
Climbed the hill. The last mist fell away.

And under the trees, beyond time’s brittle drift,
I stood like Adam in his lonely garden
On that first morning, shaken out of sleep,
Rubbing his eyes, listening, parting the leaves,
Like tissue on some vast, incredible gift.
~ Mary Oliver – “Morning In a New Land”

I want to wake each morning as if it were my first look at the world: to be astonished at the slow advance of the light and how the detail of the landscape begins to emerge from the mist of darkness.

As it is, I emerge from night covering my eyes, barely willing to look through my fingers to see what the day may hold. It is not the my first look at morning after all; I’m too aware there is heavy baggage to carry from the day before, and the day before that. The freshness of a new start is fermented by my history.

What gift can I bring to each new day? What gift can I bring to the God who came down to dwell in this weedy garden alongside me, help me carry my baggage and shoulder my load – indeed to carry me to my rest?

I will open my eyes and take in the morning, unwrapping it like the precious gift it is.

The best gift we can give to God is to receive the gift of Him with the astonishment it deserves.

One at a Time

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sunrise66173

 

morning6615

 

They know so much more now about
the heart we are told but the world
still seems to come one at a time
one day one year one season and here
it is spring once more with its birds
nesting in the holes in the walls
its morning finding the first time
its light pretending not to move
always beginning as it goes
~W.S.Merwin “To This May”

 

springfarm

 

bugged2

 

Each morning is a fresh try at life,
a new chance to get things right
even if all our yesterdays are broken.

So I drink in the golden dawn,
take a deep breath of cool air
and dive in head first
into light and blossoms,
hoping I too just might
stay afloat today.

 

bluejune

yellowpoppy