Lined with light the twigs are stubby arrows. A gilded trunk writhes Upward from the roots, from the pit of the black tentacles.
In the book of spring a bare-limbed torso is the first illustration.
Light teaches the tree to beget leaves, to embroider itself all over with green reality, until summer becomes its steady portrait and birds bring their lifetime to the boughs.
Then even the corpse light copies from below may shimmer, dreaming it feels the cheeks of blossom. ~May Swenson “April Light”
This world is not defeated by death.
An unprecedented illumination emerged from the tomb on a bright Sabbath morning to guarantee that we struggling people, we who feel we are no more than bare twigs and stubs, we who aren’t budging from where we are rooted, are now begetting green, ready to burst into blossom, our glowing cheeks pink with life, a picture of our future fruitfulness.
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This saying good-by on the edge of the dark And the cold to an orchard so young in the bark Reminds me of all that can happen to harm An orchard away at the end of the farm All winter, cut off by a hill from the house.
I wish I could promise to lie in the night And think of an orchard’s arboreal plight When slowly (and nobody comes with a light) Its heart sinks lower under the sod. But something has to be left to God. ~Robert Frost from “Good-bye and Keep Cold”
The winter orchard looks cold and silent yet I know plenty is happening beneath the sod.
There isn’t much to be done this time of year until the pruning hook comes out. Ideally, now is the time the trees should be shaped and shorn.
Pruning is one of those tasks that is immensely satisfying–after it’s done – way after. Several years after in some cases. In the case of our fruit trees, which all have an average age of 90 years or more, it is a matter of prune or lose them forever. We set to work, trying to gently retrain wild and chaotic apple, cherry, plum, and pear trees, but our consistency was lacking. The trees remained on the wild side, defying us, and several have toppled over in windstorms due to their weakened frame.
We hired additional help, hoping to get ahead of the new growth, but our helper had the “chain saw” approach to pruning and literally scalped several trees into dormancy before we saw what was happening and stopped the savaging.
Instead, the process of retraining a wild tree is slow, meticulous, thoughtful, and expectant. We must study the tree, the setting, know the fruit it is supposed to bear, and begin making decisions before making cuts. The dead stuff goes first–that’s easy. It’s not useful, it’s taking up space, it’s outta here. It’s the removal of viable branches that takes courage. Like thinning healthy vegetable plants in a garden, I can almost hear the plant utter a little scream as we choose it to be the next one to go. Gardening is not for the faint of heart. So ideally, we choose to trim about a third of the superfluous branches, rather than taking them all at once. In three years, we have the hoped-for tree, bearing fruit that is larger, healthier and hardier.
Then we’re in maintenance mode. That takes patience, vision, dedication, and love. That’s the ideal world.
The reality is we skip years of pruning work, sometimes several years in a row. Or we make a really dumb error and prune in a way that is counter productive, and it takes several years for the tree to recover. Or, in the case of the scalping, those trees took years to ever bear fruit again–standing embarrassed and naked among their peers.
Then there is the clean up process after pruning–if it was just lopping off stuff, I’d be out there doing it right now, but the process of picking up all those discarded branches off the ground, carrying them to a brush pile and burning them takes much more time and effort. That’s where kids come in very handy.
Our three children tolerated our shaping, trimming and pruning for years, grew tall and strong and ready to meet the world, to give it all they’ve got. In our hopes and dreams for them, there were times we probably pruned a bit in haste, or sometimes neglected to prune enough, but even so, they’re all bearing great fruit, now grown up with few “scars” to show for our mistakes.
I’m still pruned regularly by the Master Gardener, often painfully. Sometimes I see the pruning hook coming, knowing the dead branches that I’ve needlessly hung onto must go, and sometimes it comes as a complete surprise, cutting me at my most vulnerable spots. Some years I bear better fruit than other years. Some years, it seems, hardly any at all. I can be cold and dormant, unfruitful and at times desolate.
Yet, I’m still rooted, still fed when hungry and watered when thirsty, and still, amazingly enough, loved. I’ll continue to hang on to the root that chose to feed me and hold me fast through the windstorms of life. Even when my trunk is leaning, my branches broken, my fruit withered, I will know that God’s love sustains me, no matter what.
I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener. He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit he prunes so that it will be even more fruitful. John 15: 1-2
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Lord, the time has come. The summer has been so long. Lay your shadows over the sundials and let loose the wind over the fields.
Order the last fruits to fully ripen; give them two more days of southern sun, urge them to perfection and speed the last sweetness into the laden vine.
Those who have no house, will not build one now. Those who are alone will long remain so, they will rise, and read, and write long letters and through the avenues go here and there restlessly wandering, with the leaves drifting down. ~Rainer Maria Rilke “Herbsttag” English translation by Paul Archer from 1902 in the collection Das Buch der Bilder.
First hints of our condition manifest: Spite in the wind, mist-gauze across the moon, Light chill, the spider’s filaments, blanched grass, And two days as warm as the south change nothing at all. A morning comes when you know this cannot end well. Soon it will be no time for gathering in gardens All too soon, my dears, it will be the weather For Brahms quintets, for leaves drifting triste past the windows Of those in their rooms alone for the duration, For whom this is no time to build. Those now alone Are going to remain so through this estranging season Of reading, of writing emails as detailed as letters, Of watching dry leaves grow sodden on empty pavements. Rilke said this in lines that I last read in Edinburgh With my most beautiful aunt in her later age When, many things gone, she remembered those verse in German. ~Peter Davidson “September Castles”
Enter autumn as you would a closing door. Quickly, cautiously. Look for something inside that promises color, but be wary of its cast — a desolate reflection, an indelible tint. ~Pamela Steed Hill “September Pitch”
Summer has packed up, and moved on without bidding adieu or looking back over its shoulder. Cooling winds have carried in darkening clouds. I gaze upward to see and smell the change. Rain has fallen, long overdue, yet there is temptation to bargain for a little more time. Though we needed this good drenching, there are still potatoes to pull from the ground, apples and pears to pick, tomatoes not yet ripened, corn cobs too skinny to pick.
I’m just not ready to wave goodbye to sun-soaked clear skies.
The overhead overcast is heavily burdened with clues of what is coming: earlier dusk, the feel of moisture, the deepening graying hues, the briskness of breezes, the inevitable mud and mold. There is no negotiation possible. I need to steel myself and get ready, wrapping myself in the soft shawl of inevitability.
So autumn advances with the clouds, taking up residence where summer left off. Though there is still clean up of the overabundance left behind, autumn will bring its own unique plans for an exhilarating display of a delicious palette of hues.
Lord, the time has come. The truth is we’ve seen nothing yet.
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So what is the finding of a friend but the gradual peeling of an orange— the tough rind begins to yield, and the rich, juicy fruit drips in your hands, and you taste sweetness that quenches a life-thirst. ~Carol Bialock, “The Finding of a Friend” from Coral Castles
A poem should be palpable and mute As a globed fruit,
Dumb As old medallions to the thumb,
Silent as the sleeve-worn stone Of casement ledges where the moss has grown—
A poem should be wordless As the flight of birds.
*
A poem should be motionless in time As the moon climbs,
Leaving, as the moon releases Twig by twig the night-entangled trees,
Leaving, as the moon behind the winter leaves, Memory by memory the mind—
A poem should be motionless in time As the moon climbs.
*
A poem should be equal to: Not true.
For all the history of grief An empty doorway and a maple leaf.
For love The leaning grasses and two lights above the sea—
Your voice, with clear location of June days, Called me- outside the window. You were there, Light yet composed, as in the just soft stare Of uncontested summer all things raise Plainly their seeming into seamless air.
Then your love looked as simple and entire As that picked pear you tossed me, and your face As legible as pearskin’s fleck and trace, Which promise always wine, by mottled fire More fatal flashed than ever human grace.
And your gay gift – Oh when I saw it fall Into my hands, through all that naive light, It seemed as blessed with truth and new delight As must have been the first great gift of all. ~Richard Wilbur “June Light”
June, so green, so prolific, can have the feel of the first Garden. Our trees are heavy with growing fruit and, thankfully, none are forbidden. I tread quietly through the sunlit orchard, not wanting to spoil this glad gift of a morning.
Later in the summer, when a ripe pear loosens its grip from the branch and settles into my hands, I will share of its pure grace and taste. With gratitude, I will offer it up, glistening with dew and truth, to you.
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Here is the source of every sacrament, The all-transforming presence of the Lord, Replenishing our every element Remaking us in his creative Word.
For here the earth herself gives bread and wine, The air delights to bear his Spirit’s speech, The fire dances where the candles shine, The waters cleanse us with His gentle touch.
And here He shows the full extent of love To us whose love is always incomplete, In vain we search the heavens high above, The God of love is kneeling at our feet.
Though we betray Him, though it is the night. He meets us here and loves us into light. ~Malcolm Guite “Maundy Thursday”
On this Maundy Thursday we are called to draw near Him, to gather together among the hungry and thirsty to the Supper He has prepared.
He washes the dirt off our feet; we look away, mortified. He serves us from Himself; we fret about whether we are worthy.
We are not.
Starving and parched, grimy and weary, hardly presentable to be guests at His table, we are made worthy only because He has made us so.
This year’s Lenten theme: So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal. 2 Corinthians 4: 18
By the magnet of Christ I am drawn to stillness My joy is to live as a recluse of Love Resting my head on the heart of all Mercy Living in the presence of the Presence
This is my home where I will live forever: Hidden with Christ in God
This breath and this heartbeat, the rhythm of my praising, sounding to the wing-beats of angel-song. My will is an anchor in the depths of silence – Living in the presence of the Presence
Each morning I rise in the Holy of Holies to sacrifice each moment of time. Burning like a lamp with the oil of gladness – Living in the presence of the Presence
Fasting from all things to feast on your manna, bread in the wilderness gathered each dawn. Tasting your sweetness in quiet communion – Living in the presence of the Presence
With my prayer I am sowing / sewing the seeds of heaven, a garden of paradise to bloom on earth. Spinning and weaving, revealing the beauty of Living in the presence of the Presence
In the silence of the senses I know only Being – the vast fields of heaven in the smallest thing. Unknowable mystery that cannot be spoken living in the presence of the Presence ~Kathleen Deignan
All the love you will ever feel you have always carried within you
The pellet you think love is
blooms into stone, into flame, into glass
The tree knows how to feed every part of itself
When you tap the tree to drink it it speaks to you
There is sweetness in you All the self can do is melt ~Hannah Stephenson from “Sap Season”
The last remaining cherry tree on this farm, a Royal Anne, has stood between house and barn for over ninety years, bearing heavily some years, and other years, like this one, yielding only a handful of fruit. Last year was a bumper crop followed by a hot dry summer and a bitter cold winter. The old tree was overly stressed, its branch joints and bark defects oozing miniature sculptures of resin in response.
These secretions feel hard and seem glass-like, yet reflecting this tree’s slow internal circulation, they change subtly day by day. This amber becomes this tree’s aging and suffering made manifest. Though its cherries burst with juicy flavor, it bleeds crystalline flame from its wounds.
What a gift is this leaking love, moving deep inside an old trunk. In its thirsty anguish, our dear cherry tree is weeping to reflect the sun.
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Out of the nursery and into the garden where it rooted and survived its first hard winter, then a few years of freedom while it blossomed, put out its first tentative branches, withstood the insects and the poisons for insects, developed strange ideas about its height and suffered the pruning of its quirks and clutters, its self-indulgent thrusts and the infighting of stems at cross purposes year after year. Each April it forgot why it couldn’t do what it had to do, and always after blossoms, fruit, and leaf-fall, was shown once more what simply couldn’t happen.
Its oldest branches now, the survivors carved by knife blades, rain, and wind, are sending shoots straight up, blood red, into the light again. ~David Wagoner “The Cherry Tree”
A stone’s throw from an abandoned homestead foundation leans an ancient cherry tree, bent by countless storms and prunings, its northern half now bare, yet from the southern half dangles clusters of sweet century old promises.
Once orchard lifeblood of this farm, its fruit picked for farmers’ market an early dawn hour’s wagon ride to town; now broken down, forgotten until this week of fruitful surrender.
Already, but not yet finished, roots still reaching deep for one more season; a faithful cycle blooming forth with budding life from gnarled knots to soon yield glorious from weary dying branches.
Hundreds of glistening amber globes of rosy sheen cling clustered on crooked lichened limbs, to be gathered heaping into bowls of gold, awaiting ecstatic burst of savored perfection, fulfilling an old promise of sweet abandon.
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Whose woods these are I think I know. His house is in the village though; He will not see me stopping here To watch his woods fill up with snow.
My little horse must think it queer To stop without a farmhouse near Between the woods and frozen lake The darkest evening of the year.
He gives his harness bells a shake To ask if there is some mistake. The only other sound’s the sweep Of easy wind and downy flake.
The woods are lovely, dark and deep, But I have promises to keep, And miles to go before I sleep, And miles to go before I sleep. ~Robert Frost, “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” from The Poetry of Robert Frost
I wish one could press snowflakes in a book like flowers. ~James Schuyler from “February 13, 1975”
When a January night lingers long, beginning too early and lasting too late, I find myself in my own insistent winter, wanting to hide away from trouble deep in a peaceful snowy woods, knowing I choose to avoid doing what is needed when it is needed.
I look inward when I must focus outside myself. I muffle my ears to deafen voices crying in need. I turn away rather than meet a stranger’s gaze.
A wintry soul is a cold and empty place, not lovely, dark and deep.
I appeal to my Creator who knows my darkness. He expects me to keep my promises because He keeps His promises. His buds of hope and warmth and color and fruit will arise from my bare branches.
He brings me out of the night to finish what He brought me here to do.
A book from Barnstorming combining the beauty of Lois Edstrom’s words and Barnstorming photography, available for order here:
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I shall open my eyes and ears. Once every day I shall simply stare at a tree, a flower, a cloud, or a person. I shall not then be concerned at all to ask what they are but simply be glad that they are. I shall joyfully allow them the mystery of what C.S. Lewis calls their “divine, magical, terrifying and ecstatic” existence. ~Clyde Kilby in “Amazed in the Ordinary”
An open heart is alive to wonder, to the sheer marvel of “isness.” It is remarkable that the world is, that we are here, that we can experience it. This world is not ordinary. Indeed, what is remarkable is that it could ever look ordinary to us. An open heart knows “radical amazement.” An open heart and gratitude go together. We can feel this in our bodies. In the moments in my life when I have been most grateful, I have felt a swelling, almost a bursting in my chest. ~Marcus Borg from The Heart of Christianity
photo by Nicole Moorephoto by Nicole Moorephoto by Nicole Moorephoto by Nicole Moore
Most of the time I’m sleep walking through each day, oblivious, as if in dense fog with unseeing wide-open eyes. There is a slow motion quality to time as it flows from one hour to the next to the next. I stumble through life asleep, the path indiscernible, my future uncertain, my purpose illusive.
Am I continually dozing or shall I rouse to the radical amazement of each moment?
When I’m simply glad, everything becomes more vivid, as in a dream — the sounds of geese flying overhead, the smell of the farm, the layers of a foggy landscape, the taste of an autumn apple right from the tree, the string of fog-drop pearls on a spider web, the intensity of every breath, the purpose for being.
So wake me -please- to dream some more. I want to chew on it again and again, simply savoring and simply glad.
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