Tag: life

Breathing Through the Knothole

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Her elbow rested here
a century ago.
This is the field

she looked upon,
a mad rush of wheat
anchored to the barn.

What her thoughts were,
the words she penned
are driven into the grain,

its deep tide crossing
under my hand. She breathes
through the knothole.

Outside, the wind
pushes the farm
down an ally of stars.
~Wyatt Townley, “The Oak Desk” from The Afterlives of Trees

J.R.Tolkien’s writing desk at the Wade Center at Wheaton College
Ears of Wheat – Van Gogh museum

A writing desk is simply a repurposed tree; the smoothly sanded surface of swirling grain and knotholes nourish and produce words and stories rather than leaves and fruit.

I can easily lose myself in the wood and wondering about its origins, whether it is as I sit at a window composing, or whether I’m outside walking among the trees which are merely potential writing desks in the raw.

Museums often feature the writing desks of the famous and I’ve seen a few over the years – it is thrilling to be able touch the wood they touched as they wrote – to gaze at the same grain patterns and knotholes they saw as the words gelled, and feel the worn spots where their elbows rested.

Though my little desk won’t ever become a museum piece, nor will my words be long-remembered, I am grateful for the tree that gave me this place to sit each morning, breathing deeply, praying that when I sit here, I might bear and share worthy fruit.

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Choosing Joy

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Even a wounded world is feeding us.
Even a wounded world holds us,
giving us moments of wonder and joy.
I choose joy over despair. Not because
I have my head in the sand, but because
joy is what the earth gives me daily
and I must return the gift.
~Robin Wall Kimmerer from Braiding Sweetgrass

Tonight at sunset walking on the snowy road,
my shoes crunching on the frozen gravel, first

through the woods, then out into the open fields
past a couple of trailers and some pickup trucks, I stop

and look at the sky. Suddenly: orange, red, pink, blue,
green, purple, yellow, gray, all at once and everywhere.

I pause in this moment at the beginning of my old age
and I say a prayer of gratitude for getting to this evening

a prayer for being here, today, now, alive
in this life, in this evening, under this sky.
~David Budbill “Winter: Tonight: Sunset” from While We’ve Still Got Feet

I try to remember this each day,
no matter how things feel,
no matter how tired or distracted I am,
no matter how worried, or fearful or heartsick–

I can grumble with the best of the them. There is camaraderie in shared grumbling, as well as an exponential increase in dissatisfaction as everyone shares their misery. Some relationships, indeed even political movements, are based on collaborative cynicism, dark humor and just plain complaining.

But I know better. I’ve seen where grousing leads and I feel it aching in my bones when I’m steeped in it. The sky is grayer, the clouds are thicker, the cold is chillier, the night is darker–on and on to its overwhelming suffocating conclusion.

I have the privilege to choose joy, to turn away from the bleak. I can find the single ray of sun and stand in it, absorbing and equipping myself to be radiant when others need it more than me. This is not putting on a “happy face” — instead joy adopts me, holds me close in the tough times and won’t abandon me. Though at times joy may be temporarily behind a cloud, I know it is there even when I can’t see it.

Joy is mine to choose because joy has chosen me, so I share it here with you – our very existence distilled down to this moment of beauty.

One breath, one blink, one pause, one whispered word: thanks.

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The Secret of Life

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Two girls discover   
the secret of life   
in a sudden line of   
poetry.

I who don’t know the   
secret wrote   
the line. They   
told me

(through a third person)   
they had found it
but not what it was   
not even

what line it was. No doubt   
by now, more than a week   
later, they have forgotten   
the secret,

the line, the name of   
the poem. I love them   
for finding what   
I can’t find,

and for loving me   
for the line I wrote,   
and for forgetting it   
so that

a thousand times, till death   
finds them, they may   
discover it again, in other   
lines

in other   
happenings. And for   
wanting to know it,   
for

assuming there is   
such a secret, yes,   
for that   
most of all.
~Denise Levertov “The Secret”

The secret of seeing is, then the pearl of great price.
If I thought he could teach me to find it and keep it forever
I would stagger barefoot across a hundred deserts after any lunatic at all.
But although the pearl may be found, it may not be sought.

The literature of illumination reveals this above all:
although it comes to those who wait for it,
it is always, even to the most practiced and adept,
a gift and a total surprise.

I return from one walk
knowing where the killdeer nests in the field by the creek and the hour the laurel blooms.
I return from the same walk a day later scarcely knowing my own name.

Litanies hum in my ears;
my tongue flaps in my mouth.
Ailinon, alleluia!
~Annie Dillard from Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

Is a lamp brought in to be put under a basket, or under a bed, and not on a stand?  
For nothing is hidden except to be made manifest;
nor is anything secret except to come to light…
Mark 4: 21-22

We all want to know it: learning the elusive secret that would resolve the mystery of our existence. Why are we here at all and for what purpose do we live and breathe?

Some are untroubled by not knowing. They live out each day one step at a time, not looking back and not too worried about what is coming up around the bend while others are always looking for meaning, evaluating the significance of each moment.

Some of us seek middle ground. I am eager to have life’s mysteries cleared up, but content to give the unknown the time it demands. Each day I search for something that asks for my complete attention, whether a line of poetry or a slant of light in the sky, or my grandchild’s arms around my neck. That is enough for me to settle in with gratitude for simply being here. And it feels right to share what I see and read and hear and experience.

So here is one person’s secret of life: don’t give up the search and share what you find along the way…

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Life Goes Too Fast

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Sometimes you don’t get a chance
To pause and rest
Even to just take it all in
Sometimes life just goes too fast
And if you halt, even for a moment
You could get rolled over
By the momentum of existence
So, push yourself and keep going
Because once you stop
You may not get started again
And if you need a breather
Do it after the big stuff is done –
I guarantee you the view
Will be a whole lot better
~Eric Nixon “The Momentum of Existence” from Equidistant

The weather app on my phone tells me precisely when sunrise and sunset will happen every day, but I’m often too distracted to be present to witness them. I miss some great shows because I don’t get up early enough or don’t return home in time or simply don’t bother to look out the window or pay attention.

These are brilliant light and shadow shows that are free for the having if only I pause, take a breather, and watch.

The view from our hill keeps getting better the older I get. The momentum of daily life slows enough to allow me, breathless, to take in the best art show around.

No charge for admission and the Artist’s exhibit rotates daily.

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Like Dust in Sunlight

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The poem rises 
like dust in sunlight 
as I hold my breath
             and write
~Rick Maxson, “Ars Poetica” from  Molly and the Thieves

Words have breathed life into the dust from which we all were created.

I am still a mess of dust and words. Words suspended in light before my eyes are a reminder that God Himself breathed life and spirit into merest dust.

When I try to wrestle words down from the air to the page, I try to help them make sense, hoping then I might make sense.

I find myself holding my own breath as I write, as if that will keep my words orderly and safe, yet they have a tendency to come out jumbled and random, with no rhyme nor reason.

In my world, there is no such thing as mere dust or meaningless words. They wait for God’s holy breath to bring them to light and life.

Then the Lord God formed a man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.
Genesis 2:7

Now available: a gift from Barnstorming if you donate $50 to support daily Barnstorming posts – you will receive three blank notecards of original art from our farm.

art by Anja Lovegren
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A Shimmering Evening Light

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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”

For over two years, we have been surrounded
by a shimmering corpse light hovering close,
masked and wary when we needed each other most.

Even so, the 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 became no more than bare twigs and stubs,
we who feel at times hardly alive,
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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Raise Your Hands in Wonder

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Here, where this present
darkness presses in, pushes
down, imprisons you in
ice and stone to wall you up
alive or crush you into dust,
even here, the gold glimmers
through a crack in the rock, splits
the stones as it flames up
in the ruby hue of a tulip
bursting into bloom, droops
down in the blushing pink
of a cherry blossom fluttering
in the breeze, sings in the
trilling call of a finch,
shines in dewdrops sparkling
on a spider’s web. Oh the gold
pulsing in graced moments
of camaraderie and laughter,
in the warmth of gentle hands
caressing a cold brow, in quiet
words of love that brim
the hearer’s eyes with tears.
And the gold that rises up
like incense when you raise your
eyes, your heart, your hands
in wonder, thanks, and praise.
All this golden glory! Light
and love. And life. And life. And life!
~E.M. MacDonald “The Double Strand”

It feels as if everything is emerging from the darkness:
birdsong is earlier and louder,
grass squeaks with growth,
buds unfurling with vigor,
light glowing with promise.

There is much momentum
running pellmell into longer days;
so much glory bursting all at once.

As showers blow in
from clouds gray and thick with menace,
we are stilled and quieted in the drenching,
waiting, arms raised, for a shaft of light
to break through again,
turning everything from gray to golden.

photo by Natalia Burke

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At the End

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Not every man knows what he shall sing at the end,
Watching the pier as the ship sails away, or what it will seem like
When he’s held by the sea’s roar, motionless, there at the end,
Or what he shall hope for once it is clear that he’ll never go back.

When the time has passed to prune the rose or caress the cat,
When the sunset torching the lawn and the full moon icing it down
No longer appear, not every man knows what he’ll discover instead.
When the weight of the past leans against nothing, and the sky

Is no more than remembered light, and the stories of cirrus
And cumulus come to a close,
and all the birds are suspended in flight,
Not every man knows what is waiting for him, or what he shall sing
When the ship he is on slips into darkness, there at the end.
~Mark Strand “The End,” from The Continuous Life

Write as if you were dying. At the same time, assume you write for an audience consisting solely of terminal patients. That is, after all, the case.
~Annie Dillard from “Write Till You Drop”

I began to write after September 11, 2001 because that day it became obvious to me I was dying, though more slowly than the thousands who vanished in fire and ash that day, their voices obliterated along with their bodies.  So, nearly each day since, while I still have voice and a new dawn to greet, I speak through my fingers to others, who, like me, are dying.

We are, after all, terminal patients, some of us more prepared than others to move on, slipping away into darkness, as if our readiness had anything to do with the timing.

Each day we get a little closer. I write in order to feel a little more ready.  Each day I want to detach just a little bit, leaving a trace of my voice behind, wondering what will be left to say or sing at the end.  Eventually, through unmerited grace, perhaps so much of me will be left on the page there won’t be anything or anyone left to do the typing.

No words should go to waste nor moments allowed to lapse unnoticed.
I dwell here for now, knowing Who will be waiting for me there.

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Nothing To Hold On To

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They were smooth ovals,   
and some the shade of potatoes—   
some had been moth-eaten   
or spotted, the maples   
were starched, and crackled   
like campfire.   

We put them under tracing paper   
and rubbed our crayons   
over them, X-raying   
the spread of their bones   
and black, veined catacombs.   

We colored them green and brown   
and orange, and   
cut them out along the edges,   
labeling them deciduous   
or evergreen.   

All day, in the stuffy air of the classroom,   
with its cockeyed globe,   
and nautical maps of ocean floors,   
I watched those leaves   

lost in their own worlds   
flap on the pins of the bulletin boards:   
without branches or roots,   
or even a sky to hold on to.
~Judith Harris “Gathering Leaves in Grade School”

They are more like us than we care to admit:
veined and ribbed,
some wide, some thin,
lots with sharp edges, others rounded,
a variety of colors and shapes,
twisting this way and that with the breeze,
over-eager to let go,
explore wide open spaces
yet finding themselves blown and broken
thrown far from home and roots
with nothing left to hold on to,
destined to dust,
longing to return to branch and connection.

Even so-
even so, when we are let go,
we are thinking:
oh, what a life!

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Tomorrows Less Long

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Let me enjoy
this late-summer day of my heart
while the leaves are still green
and I won’t look so close
as to see that first tint
of pale yellow slowly creep in.
I will cease endless running
and then look to the sky
ask the sun to embrace me
and then hope she won’t tell
of tomorrows less long than today.
Let me spend just this time
in the slow-cooling glow
of warm afternoon light
and I’d think
I will still have the strength
for just one more
last fling of my heart.
– Jonathan Bohrn, Late August

August rushes by like desert rainfall,
A flood of frenzied upheaval,
Expected,
But still catching me unprepared.
Like a match flame
Bursting on the scene,
Heat and haze of crimson sunsets.
Like a dream
Of moon and dark barely recalled,
A moment,
Shadows caught in a blink.
Like a quick kiss;
One wishes for more
But it suddenly turns to leave,
Dragging summer away.
–  Elizabeth Maua Taylor, August  

I’m in the time of life when what is to come is ever so much shorter than what has been. I muse now at my sudden revelation as a five year old that a time would come when I would cease to be on this earth. I had no idea how soon that would come or whether I would have many years to think about how I might come to an end. That knowledge has colored all my days, knowing they are numbered and finite.

Now, like the drying leaves, I watch my edges curling and changing color in preparation – a kind of beauty preceding an eventual letting go.

I remember thinking, in my kindergarten-size brain, that I could not waste a minute of this life and needed to pay attention to everything. That has been much harder than I imagined: there is pain in attending to wars and famine, illness and injury, tragedy and tribulation. I was given my ears to hear, my eyes to see, my mouth to speak – for good reason. Though my heart hurts to read headlines, I must fling it into the messiness around me.

Even the leaves bleed red as tomorrow is less long.

It is the waning light and shortening days that colors my view like smoky haze in the sky painting a sunset deep orange.  The coming darkness is temporary and, like me, is inevitably finite; it will never conquer the light that is everlasting.

More Barnstorming photography and poetry from Lois Edstrom can be ordered in this book available here: